The Party of 1946 and the Politics of 300 Biryani Packets
By Our Political Correspondent
COLOMBO — Once the grand architect of Sri Lanka’s post-independence political order, the United National Party now finds itself confronting a question that would have seemed absurd even a decade ago: can it still mobilise a crowd large enough to matter?
This year’s May Day preparations have supplied a stark, almost symbolic answer. Party organisers, according to multiple internal sources, have arranged a modest distribution of roughly 300 biryani packets—reportedly sourced from the well-known Buhari Hotel—for what is expected to be a tightly managed, low-attendance gathering. In a country where May Day rallies are traditionally measured in tens of thousands, the optics are unforgiving.
The irony is difficult to ignore. The same Buhari establishment once maintained close links with the UNP-aligned trade union movement, particularly the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, which in its heyday could deliver formidable working-class turnout. Today, the logistical scale of the party’s flagship labour event appears reduced to catering arithmetic.
From Mass Movement to Managed Optics
The UNP’s decline has been neither sudden nor mysterious. Electoral collapse, organisational atrophy, and a prolonged overreliance on elite-driven politics have steadily hollowed out its grassroots machinery. The party that once commanded sweeping mandates now struggles to convert even residual brand recognition into physical mobilisation.
For many observers, the contrast with the era of Ranasinghe Premadasa is particularly jarring. Premadasa, assassinated during a May Day rally in 1993, embodied a style of politics rooted in mass engagement—dense crowds, populist messaging, and relentless organisational discipline. That legacy now sits uneasily beside a 300-meal distribution plan.
Leadership Under Strain
At the centre of the party’s current predicament is Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose long stewardship of the UNP has been both stabilising and, critics argue, suffocating. Having re-entered the presidency through parliamentary mechanisms rather than a direct electoral mandate, Wickremesinghe’s authority within the party remains contested, even as his institutional experience is acknowledged.
Internal tensions have resurfaced in familiar form. Ravi Karunanayake, a senior figure with his own political base, is once again seen as positioning himself as an alternative centre of gravity. The mutual recriminations—particularly over the enduring shadow of the Central Bank bond scandal—have produced what one insider described, with more candour than diplomacy, as a “pillow fight with constitutional consequences.”
The Optics of Decline
Diplomatic observers in Colombo, speaking on condition of anonymity, describe the UNP’s current posture as “structurally diminished.” One European source noted that the party’s international engagements increasingly resemble transactional appeals rather than strategic partnerships, while another remarked—perhaps uncharitably—that the UNP now “negotiates events at the scale of receptions, not rallies.”
Such assessments may be harsh, but they reflect a broader perception: the UNP no longer sets the political tempo. Instead, it reacts—often belatedly—to a landscape reshaped by newer formations and more agile populist machinery.
A Party at an Inflection Point
The immediate question is not whether the UNP can stage a May Day event—it can, even with 300 participants—but whether it can recover its function as a mass political vehicle. That requires more than symbolic gatherings or nostalgic references to past leaders. It demands structural renewal: credible second-tier leadership, reactivation of trade union networks, and a message that resonates beyond Colombo’s policy circles.
Absent that, the party risks becoming what one veteran organiser privately conceded: “a historical institution without a contemporary constituency.”
For now, the biryani packets will be distributed, the speeches will be delivered, and the party will insist—publicly—that a revival is underway. But in Sri Lankan politics, scale is substance. And at 300 plates, the margin between survival and irrelevance has rarely looked so thin.