Ranjith Madduma Bandara correctly predicted UNP perdition and Rajapaksa’s mass appeal to Asian Tribune

Sri Lanka’s long-serving opposition United National Party parliamentarian from rural Monaragala District Ranjith Madduma Bandara told the truth and nothing but the truth about the mood of the nation, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s strategy to defeat the Tamil Tigers, the UNP leader Wickremasinghe’s lack of understanding of the pulse of the rural masses and UNP’s disastrous march toward perdition to Asian Tribune two months before the defeat of the terror out fit at a dinner in Las Vegas.

Bandara’s predictions, analyses and observations given to this correspondent at that March 2009 interview in Las Vegas, USA turned out to be dead accurate.

The Asian Tribune was impressed, so were some yesteryear UNP activists who associated at the interview, how close this UNP parliamentarian of twenty years to the general pulse of the rural masses of Sri Lanka.

All his predictions on that March 2009-day interview have come absolutely correct Mahinda Rajapaksa winning an unprecedented 17-percent-margin victory at the January 26 presidential election mostly from the 72% rural Sri Lanka and the political wilderness the UNP faced before and after the election.

Since that Asian Tribune interview UNP leader Ranil Wickremasinghe has been tightening the noose that he has put in the neck of Madduma Bandara; the latest move deciding to remove him from the party’s district leadership effective March 09, 2010.

American Embassy in Colombo would have hired Madduma Bandara for its political section as an analyst if they knew how accurately this man could predict events, developments, political climate and how close the man to the pulse of the rural masses of Sri Lanka.

After all, Sri Lanka is 72% rural and the UNP seem to have dropped a person who is close to the grass roots and who could predict the behavior of the rural masses.

But at that Asian Tribune interview on 27 March (2009) Madduma Bandara did not give the impression that he had lost hope about the prospects of the party to which his father sacrificed his life to an assassin in 1964 in his native Bibile in the Monaragala District and his uncle sacrificed his wealth and energy to build the party in that region despite the latter is now a cabinet minister in the current Rajapaksa administration because of his utter disgust with the manner in which Wickremasinghe is running the party.

Ranjith Madduma Bandara opened his heart at this Las Vegas dinner with absolute contempt of his party leader who has presided over more than a dozen national and regional political defeats since 1994.

He sensed that at another nationwide election Mahinda Rajapaksa could muster popular mandate describing that the UNP was on the road to perdition.

Bandara described how successful Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa has been while militarily battling a ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorist organization to protect the nation’s territorial integrity and sovereignty is simultaneously handling politically and diplomatically a somewhat hostile international community.

This was two months before the defeat of the LTTE and the annihilation of its entire leadership including Prabhakaran.

In the international scene he said the LTTE’s propaganda, misinterpretation and misrepresentations have largely contributed to this hostile environment.

The UNP parliamentarian who represents the most backward and economically depressed District of Monaragala in the Uva Province, south of Sri Lanka was knowledgeable of how the Sri Lankan Diaspora in the past year or two have woken from its deep slumber to challenge Tamil Tiger propaganda machinery in the West undertaking media blitz, communicating with lawmakers in Western legislatures, engaging in protest demonstrations and apprising the international community of LTTE atrocities which has greatly helped the Rajapaksa administration to clear many issues that were internationalized by adverse propaganda.

This Sri Lankan politician was equally knowledgeable of the international scene as well as the domestic developments. The opposition UNP instead of nurturing such politicians has cut him down removing from a position he held on his own right as the district leader of the rural and backward Monaragala District.

The Asian Tribune at that March 2009 interview felt how frustration had set in to the UNP parliamentarian Ranjith Madduma Bandara. He was academically analyzing how party leader Ranil Wickremasinghe failed to grasp the maneuvers of the Rajapaksa administration in its military and political campaign to dislodge the Tamil Tigers, inability to understand the mood of the general masses and their reaction, the blindness to the political strategy of the administration to move the breakaway Karuna faction farther away from the LTTE, inability to assess the mass mood reflected in the provincial elections and how Rajapaksa has been an inspiration for the Sri Lankan Diaspora in the West to engage in the international campaign against the LTTE.

He declared at that interview “You cannot go against the sentiments of the people who want the LTTE militarily defeated and endeavor to win those same people while devaluing the military campaign of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Moment you lose track of the mood of the people you lose track of the priorities you have for the nation and for your own party. This is what has happened to the party, and Ranil Wickremasinghe is incapable of understanding the realities of politics.”

And, Madduma Bandara was proved correct at the January 2010 presidential election and the political developments associated with that election.

The moves he proposed to the party for change of direction and party leadership moved Madduma Bandara out of grace of the party leadership.

The March 2009 interview with Asian Tribunein which he projected the future of the country and the party did not get the required attention of the Wickremasinghe leadership. He sent a message to the UNP leadership how the party should reform and alerted Wickremasinghe to feel the pulse of the rural masses.

Instead of listening to the man, since the Asian Tribune interview, Wickremasinghe and his close associates were gunning for Ranjith Madduma Bandara.

Bandara finally lost his party’s district leadership position, and UNP and its leader Wickremasinghe lost a man who could have fed the party policy-making councils about the mood of the 72% rural Sri Lanka which Mahinda Rajapaksa now dominates.

- Asian Tribune -