Saturday, May 23, 2015

The UNP winning on Top and losing at the bottom!



If you speak to the top brass of the UNP they are now confident of winning, so much so that they are now on a cavalier approach to the rank and file. The MPs and in a different planet to the rest of the party workers, who are wondering what is going on these days, with the new appointments to Organizers to electorates in the past two weeks.

In using examples, I am merely trying to explain the malaise, and if the Leadership know that as they must, they appear NOT TO CARE as they believe the people are so disgusted by the last Regime’s rape of the Country, that by prior UPFA disgruntled voters that they will be able to get over the party workers concerns!

So for example DIG Prishantha Jayakody who returned to the Country after the elections, has been appointed the sole Organizer for Mahara, a very large Electorate in the Gampaha District which had very competent and financially loaded people ready to contest from there. George Perera the local Mahara Organizer for a part has been stomping the area for decades going to every event and doing his time. What must he have felt when he was unceremoniously booted out, and just given a District Organizer ship?

Well the talk is even on this expected swing, Prishantha will be lucky to get 10,000 preferences while George will get the sympathy vote! For firing him. So is that what was in the minds of those who made this decision?  Why did they appoint Keerthi Fonseka to part of Yapahuwa where he has worked in earnest for the past few months and unceremoniously dump him in favor of Ms Lokubanda? Is it the idea that she will be the first MP from Kurunegala District for the UNP in a while? I don’t understand.

This when viewed with the wonton destruction of the Youth Wing by the Secretary Tharaka Nanayakkara, who surprise surprise doubles up as his father’s private secretary, you have a recipe for disaster looking at the floating vote of 4.5M under 35s.

In my opinion the problem was with not appointing a professional manager to run the Political Operation in the form of a good full time General Secretary who can be on the road for at least half the week visiting ALL the electorates and gauging the status on the ground. The omission here is reflected in the appalling organizational snafu.

With almost all MPs stuck in their ministries with limited power to help their constituents the hard core and grass roots voter has been forgotten, and the leadership of the opinion despite all the complaints these people are giving, they will on voting day cast their vote for the elephant. This kind of condescending behavior can backfire, unless a clear policy directive is presented to the voter, and a youth policy that cannot be faulted, concurrent with the PMs 1million jobs plan.


It is NOT too late now, but the machinery for elections is not set up, and the publicity is very weak, and despite there being no threat from Rupavahini and ITN, they are not helping either trying to be all things to all men. The money is not flowing into the election coffers, and the plan is to put a blitz of advertising in one go to achieve their objectives, and will the voters buy into the last minute humiliation of the UPFA crooks?   

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