One of the most experienced politicians in the country and Chairman of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Imthiaz Bakeer Markar says that his party has prepared the plan to get the country out of the present crisis and place it on the right track and for that the party has the most experienced, talented, innovative and young team. Planning to enter the Parliament from the SJB National List  Markar revealed the internal struggle that was carried out to bring about a system change within his original party UNP. 

Excerpts: 

 With the popular slogan “System Change” especially during the Aragalaya , it looks like people are looking for a new political culture and fresh faces in place of the traditional politics and politicians. Representing a traditional political party what should be your response to this?

With greatest respect to you I don’t fully agree with your question. We are not a traditional political movement. We are a team which struggled for a system change within our original party, the United National Party (UNP). We tried to introduce a progressive journey. The political party which was started by our great grand fathers who fought to free the country from the clutches of Colonial rule had a great policies and principles. They titled it as ‘Panchavida Nidhahasa’ or five ways for freedom. If I say in short the party was on three pillars. They were democracy, social justice and unity in diversity. Getting out that journey, the UNP was dragged to be an extreme right wing political party at that time. Without our knowledge or our agreement, the party was entangled into a world’s extreme rights wing political coalition. There was an erosion of democracy to the point of appointing a lifetime Chairman for the party. We carried out an extremely hard struggle against them. Nearly 50 parliamentarians who thought that they couldn’t win the fight against Ranil Wickremesinghe left the party. But we never left but we were struggling within the party and tried to get it on to the track that is destined by the original party leaders. Finally the Working Committee of the party decided to start a new political journey under the leadership of Sajith Premadasa. So we are a new political movement that was born after carried out a system change within the UNP. On the other hand changing a country is not an easy task. For that you need maturity and also youth with fresh talents. And getting a country out of this depth and leading it to a success is a challenging task. This maturity, experience, young blood, knowledge and individuals with good exposure are with us and we are ready for that and we have presented our programme for the people. 

  What is the number one priority for SJB at this election? 

Our number one priority is to win a mandate from the people to direct the country on to the right track. Even though without a majority vote there is a President who had been elected with a minority and we are waiting to start a journey with an understanding and cooperation. There are enough and more countries which go similar journeys. There are wealthy countries, economically failed countries and we have a practical plan to take this country on to that track. There are countries where President is from one party and the government from different parties. Before Trump was elected this time, the United State had a situation like that. 

In France Macron was working with a government from a different party. What we have is a social democratic contract. And the world has changed now and China has changed, Vietnam has changed, countries from the Eastern Europe have changed, Soviet Union was changed. They have welcome economic policies which interpret profit not an exploitation by an inducement or an encouragement. They come to Sri Lanka or Asia in search of profit and they go to Africa. And they have got out of traditional concepts. In my opinion Anura Kumara Dissanayake has good potential to become Sri Lanka’s Deng Xiaoping. I am confident we can walk this journey with quite confidence with our social democratic political concept.

It is not the person that is important but it is the principle, what is important is the plan and what is important is the programme

  How confident is the SJB led or SJB-supported government to come out from the current economic crisis and face the multitude of problems related to the economy, poverty, creating jobs etc etc.

To come out of this economic crisis it would not be an easy task.  There is a huge challenge and there is an extremely difficult journey ahead of us. However it is we who have the practical programme to go on this journey. What is in our hand is the programme of success stories of the countries which had come out of similar situations and countries which have even ended up becoming wealth nations.  As a political party we strived for more than two years. Our party has been formed 27 committees on the subjects of economic, education, agriculture, health and many more. There are separate policies that had been prepared for each committee.  The Economic Committee prepared the blueprint for the economic journey and our leader presented the 10-fold working programme before the parliament. Our party is a well-planned political movement and we have a talented team and we have the maturity. According to the available World Bank data families which had three meals a day now don’t have that or at least around 60 % of their food quality had been dropped. And about 50% has reached the poverty level. It is an extremely sensitive journey that the government had to take. And in our blueprint we have even explained in detail on the income generation for this journey. We had a series of discussion over the last two years and we had discussion with the academia, and with the civil society groups, and respective groups like agriculture and education. So the best team is with us and the team with most amount of experience is with us. The young fresh talent is here. No other party has presented a detailed programme to get out of this situation. There is no any other way than the road we have prepared. 

  Groups promoting former President Ranil Wickremesinghe say that it’s only Ranil Wickremesinghe who could solve the current economic crisis. Its only his path is the only way forward for the recovery of the economy. In a backdrop that SJB will not join with him anymore, are you confidence that SJB or any other government can revive the country’s economy without Ranil Wickremesinghe?

If your political solutions are expected depending on an individual person it is an extremely immature endeavor. I am not insulting any individual. I am not talking about Ranil Wickremesinghe. It is not the person that is important but it is the principle, what is important is the plan and what is important is the programme. What has happened to our economy? What have we done? Are we paying our instalments?  This is only a show up and pretending that we have come out of this debt. Actually according to the original debt repayment plan we had to repay our debt in 2038 but during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s time it was advanced to 2028 and those rulers were positioned into an extremely difficult situation. 

 Did you have any discussion so far as to how the NPP and the SJB would work together? 

As far as I know there had been no discussion so far. As the chairman of the party so far we didn’t have any discussion. We have had discussion with various parties except the UNP and our discussions have been successful and we have made alliances with them. We have had successful discussion with some of the most respected Tamil political groups and Muslim political leaders who have won the trust and confident of relevant ethnic group. 

 As per my information initially the discussions with the UNP was successful and there were positive responses but when other parties joined it, it became futile.