Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s trip to London where he met British Foreign Secretary William Hague came hard on the heels of External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris’ official visit there earlier this month at the invitation of Hague. Peiris was invited to deliver the keynote address at the first of a series of talks organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, in collaboration with the SL Ministry of External Affairs.
Wickremesinghe’s recent European tour is described on the UNP party website as “official business,” and included stops in Oslo and Brussels. The website incorrectly says Wickremesinghe was the “first Sri Lankan politician to hold an official meeting” with Hague since the new government came to power in Britain. This error would seem to cast doubt on the veracity of other information on the site regarding the tour, which is scant anyway. Peiris met Hague on October 20, and Wickremesinghe met him on the 21st.
It appears that these meetings were arranged on Wickremesinghe’s own steam and not at the invitation of the foreign governments concerned. A spokesman for the British High Commission in Colombo said “Foreign Secretary William Hague met Ranil Wickremesinghe on October 21 at the request of Mr Wickremesinghe’s office. They had a wide-ranging discussion on the current situation in Sri Lanka.” A spokesman for the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Colombo indicated Wickremesinghe’s visit to Oslo was ‘not an official state visit,’ but that the usual courtesies were extended to him as a visiting ‘Leader of the Opposition.’
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Apart from a couple of publicity photos showing him with Hague in London and with former peace negotiator Erik Solheim in Oslo, Wickremesinghe has revealed little about the nature, scope and purpose of his tour. The UNP leader does not appear to have briefed anyone before his departure. Party front liners when contacted were only able to give vague, speculative answers suggesting that he would be discussing “issues of human rights and democracy in Sri Lanka.”
UNP Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya mentioned that there were “personal relationships also” with Foreign Secretary Hague, and Defence Secretary Liam Fox (who, as a Deputy Minister in 1997, brokered the Liam Fox Agreement to bring about a bipartisan approach between Sri Lanka’s People’s Alliance government and the Opposition led by Wickremesinghe, in resolving the ethnic conflict).
Perhaps a pointer towards some kind of underlying unity of purpose in these travels lies in Jayasuriya’s reference to Wickremesinghe’s affiliation with the International Democrat Union (IDU). The IDU has its headquarters in Oslo. The UNP leader is the current Chairman of the Asia Pacific branch of this organization. William Hague is Assistant Chairman, IDU. The IDU is a right-wing club consisting of Conservative and Christian Democrat political parties around the world. Among key figures who founded it were former heads of state Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac.
The Chairman IDU at present is former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The UNP is a full member, and so is the Conservative Party of Britain which now leads the ruling coalition, and the Conservative Party of Norway, which is currently in the opposition. A Norwegian official, with whom it is confirmed Wickremesinghe met, is Conservative Party member Ine Marie Erikson Soreide, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence. Erik Solheim however is a minister in Norway’s ruling left-wing coalition.
One of the guiding principles of the IDU (enshrined in its Declaration) is its belief in the market economy as the best means of creating wealth and prosperity in society. It is not clear to what extent UNP constituents locally are aware of this declaration of principle made on behalf of the party at an international level. Although it is generally known that Wickremesinghe favours a business-friendly right-wing style of government, there is no hint of this dedication to the free market mantra in the speeches made on the UNP campaign trail during elections. Why does Wickremesinghe advocate this philosophy internationally, if he is not ready to acknowledge his allegiance to it locally? The credo of the market economy theorists (and their World Bank – IMF gurus) has been to ‘privatize, privatize, privatize,’ and the question of how successful this economic model has been in enabling benefits to “trickle down” to the grassroots (as it claims to do) is highly debated.
It must be said that the UPFA government, which (going by its rhetoric) scorned this path, has yet ended up going to the IMF for a huge loan, and now seems to be pushing for increasing privatization, notably in education - the subject of violent student protests in recent times.
It is not so much Wickremesinghe’s choice of economic model, as his apparent reluctance to be upfront about his commitment to it that should be a cause for concern among constituents. A political party is free to advocate any model it chooses, and the people are free to endorse or reject it. But in fairness, the voters need to know what to expect if they give him their vote. Wickremesinghe is also notorious for his propensity to seek solutions to all ills through alliances with the ‘international community’ (read: western states). His critics also see this tendency as a device he seeks to use in order to secure power.
These suspicions are all the more reason why he should be more forthcoming about his European tour. Unlike SLFP-led governments which have consistently anchored their foreign policy within a Non-aligned Nations’ perspective, the UNP seems to have no clearly articulated policy in international affairs.
It was not so long ago that the UNP leader drew a lot of flak for going in for talks with President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the infamous 18th Amendment, without having consulted properly with party insiders. His reticence about his foreign contacts can give rise to similar misgivings about the communication gap between him and party members and supporters at every level.
While the party leader engages in foreign travels (or ‘pita rata charika’) with undisclosed objectives and outcomes, the UNP has just launched its ‘graama charika’ (village tours) programme in anticipation of the upcoming Local Government elections scheduled for early next year. Apart from being a membership drive, the programme is intended to improve communication with the party’s diminishing rural vote base through a series of shramadana campaigns, temple visits, health camps, programmes for women and youth etc. The UNP MPs plan to live among the villagers in their homes while on ‘tour,’ in a bid to motivate activists.
Some of the more progressive elements within the party have withdrawn their support from this programme. According to some reports this was after a dispute had arisen because Wickremesinghe had crossed off Sajith Premadasa’s name from the list of speakers at the launch ceremony. Premadasa would have been the most suitable messenger for a campaign of this nature, having far more credibility at the grassroots level. The UNP cannot realistically expect to make much headway in its political project – ‘graama charika’ or any other - as long as it has a leader who does not seem to embody grassroots concerns.
The writer is a senior freelance journalist. |
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