National political parties and relationships with ethnic/religion based political parties

Leaders of national political parties should be extremely careful in making alliances with ethnic/religious based regional political parties.

Forming political alliances on ethnic basis with ethnic/religious based regional minority political parties has been, is and will be detrimental to the national political fabric of Sri Lanka (unless the agreements with these entities are specifically designed to dilute the religious ethnic identities in potential partners and ensure the national party has political and administrative control over the nomination process of potential candidates to national and electoral lists at all levels).

Short term political gain should be overlooked to gain longer term national political stability and national parties should promote and support indigenous national party minority political leadership from within the ranks of the national political parties – imports from other political parties on to the national lists and candidate lists of national political parties at all levels of elections should be completely stopped.

Let’s make a fresh start at least at the next election by not relying on ethnic/religion based political parties to gain political support from the minorities.

Let each national political party cultivate its very own minority political leaders to deliver the minority vote by empowering minority politicians within the ranks of national party politicians.

Dr. Ruvaiz Haniffa