|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 6 January 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Gamini Athukorale: Politician of our times While the sudden and unexpected death of the UNP's assistant leader Gamini Athukorale cast a pall of sorrow over the new Government which had just assumed office the manner of his death in the early hours of the new year, alone in his native homestead, has generated a spontaneous wave of sorrow at the early demise of a national leader. Athukorale never hogged the limelight and because of his relatively young age everybody felt that he had a long way more to go and a long time to accomplish his tasks. His abrupt exit therefore has been all the more wrenching even as it has brought home to a befuddled country the eternal truth of the impermanence of human existence. When Athukorale entered Parliament as part of the UNP's 1977 batch he was a novice but had been already formed in the forging house of post-1970 politics. This was the time when J. R. Jayewardene having assumed the mantle from Dudley Senanayake was on the look out for new faces to rejuvenate the UNP and rid it of its old patriarchal image. Athukorale came from a family of landed proprietors in the Ratnapura district but did not belong to the old gentry. He was educated in Colombo but did not come from the old school brigade from which most UNP leaders originated. An old Peterite who had shone at rugger Gamini Athukorale was one of the more refreshing of the 1977 UNP parliamentary batch. The UNP's 1977 batch was a mixed bag. While it contained the old Royal, St. Thomas and Trinity College brigade as well as the Oxbridge gang it also drew profusely from the Maha Vidyalayas and even from the more remote village schools. Athukorale belonged to neither category and this perhaps was a source of strength. He matured in politics fast and perhaps the most fortunate symmetry of his political life was his appointment as the Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs and Employment to the present Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Both were young and with the Chairman of the National Youth Service Council Charitha Ratwatte, until recently the Chairman of the UNP, they made a formidable combination. With their fresh faces and clean-cut good looks they were the best advertisement possible for the Youth Service Council of a government which was presided over by President Jayewardene who although young at heart was well into his old age. Athukorale never pressed his suit but his unostentatious talents were widely recognised. President Premadasa made him Minister of Lands, Mahaveli and Forestry and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe paid him the supreme accolade by appointing him as the General Secretary of the UNP in the hour of their defeat in 1994. In this context it is worthwhile remembering that it was President Jayewardene who rejuvenated the UNP after its defeats in both 1956 and 1970. Although Athukorale was much younger and not a political veteran like Mr. Jayewardene, Ranil Wickremesinghe made one of the best choices possible in appointing him to the top post at Sirikotha. That was Gamini Athukorale's finest hour. As General Secretary of the UNP, he not only blossomed into a skilled organiser but also into a mature parliamentarian. He had no intellectual pretensions but yet during his last years he became a formidable debater and a feared antagonist. His finest achievement was the Long March to Kandy and the demonstration in Colombo last year which was the precursor to the downfall of the PA by the end of that year. Yet in the midst of all these monumental struggles Gamini Athukorale was the most unassuming of men. The panoply of high office sat lightly on him. I remember meeting him at a super market in the then newly-opened Liberty Plaza, when he was a Minister in the Premadasa administration. When I walked up to him and commented that it was nice to see a Minister doing his own shopping he said quite simply that he was quite used to doing this and he did not care much for security. And this was during the height of the JVP's campaign against the Government. That encounter was particularly pleasing because my wife Manohari had also been parliamentary reporter and both of us had watched the young backbencher of 1977 flowering into a confident Cabinet Minister. That was also the measure of the man who occupied the middle ground in UNP politics and whose untimely death has prostrated the country. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
