Defeat is the mother of all intraparty battles. Some UNP stalwarts are out for their leader's scalp. Opposition and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, they believe, is jinxed; he loses elections at a rate. They seem to think that if they manage to smoke him out, hey presto, the party will start winning again.

Is Ranil the only problem the UNP is faced with?

Ranil, as our political correspondent pointed out on Sunday, is a seasoned survivor––like all other politicians. The SLFP lost elections from 1977 to 1994 continuously but Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike stayed put until her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga returned to the party's fold and undertook to steer the party to victory. (Chandrika did not want to give up the SLFP leadership even in retirement!)

However, Chandrika would have failed, like her mother, to salvage the party but for a spate of political assassinations including that of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, which left the UNP debilitated beyond measure. A disastrous split that the UNP had suffered owing to clashes between President Premadasa and a group of UNP rebels led by Lalith, Gamini and Premachandra also stood the SLFP in good stead.

Ranil lacks all the luxuries that JRJ and Chandrika were lucky to have in 1977 and 1994 respectively to turn the tables on their opponents. JRJ took on a self-castrated SLFP-led government which had incurred the wrath of the public by putting them through the hoop in the name of some cock-and-bull socialist experiments. He also had a strong team which included Premadasa, Lalith, Gamini, Ronnie and up and coming politicians like Ranil. Everything was in his favour. People, fed up with the Bandaranaike government, were crying out for a change. The UNP won hands down!

By 1994, the UNP government had failed to defeat terrorism and was busy suppressing the Opposition. The UNP was split between Gamini Dissanayake and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The assassination of Lalith Athulathmudali had triggered a tsunami of public anger against the UNP led by a president on his way out. People had no alternative but to vote for the SLFP-led PA which promised to usher in peace and democracy.

Ranil has always had to pit himself against strong Executive Presidents. An Opposition Leader under an incumbent president is like the moon appearing during daytime––the former’s chances of outshining the latter are far remote. However, Ranil, to his credit, pulled the rug from under Chandrika's executive feet in 2001 but he failed to honour his promises to the electorate after winning the parliamentary polls.

What went wrong for the UNP-led UNF government? It had an extremely hostile president all out to throw a monkey wrench in the works. It became a prisoner of the international community and the pro-LTTE lobby which successfully pressured it to sue for peace at any cost. It also lacked a proper team capable of making revolutionary changes and living up to people's high expectations. However economically sound its development programmes may have been, they were not politically wise. Its decision to reduce the state sector recruitment to a bare minimum involved a heavy political cost.

The UNF government naively put all its political eggs in the peace basket. The LTTE unilaterally suspended peace talks and demanded an ISGA, which Ranil could not grant. The failure of the peace process strengthened the hands of the SLFP. The LTTE continued to abuse the CFA thus giving President Kumaratunga an opportunity to sack the UNF government. The SLFP-led UPFA captured power in Parliament. Within one year of that defeat, Ranil had to face a presidential election. He was banking too much on the minority vote but the polls boycott in the LTTE-held terrain ruined his chances of winning.

The LTTE has been crushed in all but name under President Mahinda Rajapaksa's leadership. The UNP blundered by trying to scuttle the war effort and belittling military victories. Some of its prominent politicians have incurred public opprobrium because of their partiality to the LTTE and hostility to the armed forces. Their anti-Sri Lankan tirades at international fora have cast the UNP in a bad light.

Military victories have brought about a resurgence of nationalism, whether one likes it or not. Credit for those achievements naturally accrues to the incumbent government prosecuting the war. By being critical of the war, the UNP forfeited its right to bask in the reflected glory of the armed forces, in spite of being the party that transformed a ceremonial military into a modern combat outfit.

The blame for all this cannot be placed at the doorstep of Ranil alone. There are many other UNP heavyweights who richly deserve it.

The question is whether the complex problems the UNP is beset with can be reduced to a single person. If so, then the UNP should be able to win a future election without Ranil. What if his successor, too, loses elections, which is very likely, given the Rajapaksa government's popularity which is not yet on the wane thanks to its successful military campaign? There will be no end to changing UNP leaders!

Even if the UNP gets rid of its leader, it won't still be able to market its agenda. The UNP, it may be recalled won with Ranil at the helm in 2001. It achieved that feat as its agenda at that time was marketable, besides a mass crossover from the UPFA government. But, people rejected that agenda lock, stock and barrel in 2004. But, the UNP clings onto it.