The story of a democracy collapsing is not always a dramatic upheaval. More often, it is a slow-motion failure: you can often see, in real time, the dimming of institutions meant to restrain power. As history has repeatedly shown us, the strength of any democratic republic rests on an opposition capable of imposing scrutiny, and offering a believable path to change. Sri Lanka has reached a point where that counterweight has grown dangerously thin, with those tasked with challenging the Government miserably failing to act with the cohesion and the authority that the democratic balance requires.
A failure on 2 fronts
It is important for any opposition to remember they must first demonstrate why change is needed. They must ‘go negative’ to define the incumbent’s failures before they can credibly ‘go positive’ with their solutions.
So, the opposition’s duty is two-fold: to serve as a principled critic of the party in power, demanding a brutal accounting of its record, and simultaneously to define and present clear policy alternatives. If you fail at the first, your policy solutions are meaningless and unnecessary; if you fail at the second, the people will dismiss your criticism as noise.
The current reality is a double political failure, with the Opposition falling short on both fronts of its responsibility. Its criticism of the Government is scattered and undisciplined, unable to form the kind of unified indictment that sharpens public anger. At the same time, chronic disunity and strategic drift prevent it from presenting itself as a coherent and stable alternative, leaving the country without a credible Government-in-waiting.
SJB: A story of self-sabotage
The main Opposition, the SJB, should function as the natural counterweight to the NPP in a functioning democratic contest, yet, it has largely undone itself. Its weakness extends beyond internal fights (and public doubts) over Sajith Premadasa’s Leadership and rests in a more fundamental failure to define a clear political identity. The drift and factionalism on display are symptoms of a Party unable to agree on a single story, a settled strategy, or a clear direction, leaving it incapable of projecting authority or purpose.
What the public sees is lurching policy opportunism - a damaging spectacle where the SJB platform can swing from economic liberalism to nationalistic populism in a span of weeks, and then back again. Meanwhile, the way its member’s fire off their own statements with no shared line has created a blur of noise, and that kind of unfocused activity only deepens the confusion.
Voters respond to coherence, not volume. When the main Opposition drifts ideologically and reshapes its platform every time an internal dispute surfaces, its promise of stability collapses before it can be taken seriously. A party that cannot settle its own political direction invites the assumption that the same uncertainty would define its conduct in government. The lack of discipline, both in messaging and behaviour, steadily weakens its leadership case and erodes confidence. Authority comes from control, and until the SJB fixes its ideological centre and imposes real communication discipline, it has no basis on which to ask the country for trust.
SLPP - The weight of memory
The SLPP is, at least, actively trying to carve out a separate lane with Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa and his team who are hell bent on brushing up the Party’s image. They are working to reframe the SLPP’s tired old pitch into something that feels forward-looking, something that they hope younger voters can latch onto. They are testing new language, tightening their organisational networks, and pushing a more energetic ground presence to show that the Party still has life beyond its old guard (who continues to unintentionally sabotage the Party and its chances of ever getting into power). This blend of continuity and marketing selective nostalgia, especially with how they position former President Mahinda Rajapaksa - who, contrary to the belief of some liberal pundits, still is looked upon fondly by a large number of non-NPP voters - and rebranding helps them hold their core supporters while signalling that a post-economic crisis SLPP can still compete.
However, this effort faces an immense uphill battle. The fundamental challenge remains the deep national mistrust created not only by the economic mismanagement and collapse during the administration of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, but also by the massive, widely documented allegations of corruption that define the Party in the public imagination. No amount of refined messaging can overcome that national memory in the short term. It is also ironic to see the SLPP fighting to convince the wider electorate that the Party has fundamentally transformed under Namal Rajapaksa while fielding the same faces that the public largely detests as corrupt thieves.
The UNP and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe have begun to move, and that in itself matters. The recent attempt to rebrand the Party as a smart, digitally fluent, future-facing force signals an awareness that they lacked before that national politics has changed. This turn is clearly inspired by the logic that drove new labour - that politics must be modernised, language and presentation aligned with a new generation of voters.
But, they need to remember that rebranding without having a central governing story or message is cosmetic. New labour worked because modernisation was not just a communications trick. Communications did play a major role for sure but they had a central political argument that tied economic policy, social reform, institutional renewal, and leadership discipline into a single, repeatable idea of national direction. The UNP’s current effort falls short for now because its digital language and visual reset are not anchored to a clearly articulated national purpose or a serious policy offer. What reaches the public is a surface-level rebrand, with little explanation of what the Party would actually do in power and how its decisions would shape the country’s future.
Their legendary rivals, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) continues its decline because it has no clear message and no settled authority. The Party is paralysed by leadership disputes, with more than two figures claiming control and battles so unresolved that even Wikipedia is confused about who leads it. This confusion has reduced the SLFP to a political presence without weight, visible but unable to shape the national conversation. Even if the Party manages to reorganise, it faces the harder reality of operating in a landscape where a far more coherent and dominant leftist party already occupies the ground that it once held.
A further complication is the growing sense that the UNP, the SLPP, the SJB, and the remnants of the SLFP are collapsing into one another, a sight that unsettles their own supporters and feeds the NPP’s claim that the old political class ultimately looks after itself. Every public moment where these parties appear aligned seems to confirm the suspicion that the same figures associated with national decline never truly leave power. None of them have confronted this perception head-on, and the silence allows the NPP’s narrative to harden and spread.
Democratic systems hold together when power is matched by an opposition that knows what it stands for and how to act. In Sri Lanka, that counterweight has thinned dangerously, leaving the political field crowded but directionless. Parties that should be shaping alternatives are instead trapped in division and drift, weakening the checks that keep authority accountable. Unless the Opposition recovers a clear message, a shared direction, and the discipline to sustain them, the democratic balance will continue to erode, and public hope for meaningful change will keep receding.
The writer is a political analyst, researcher and communications executive
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication