Mayday Rally Attendance: Parties Assert Largest Participation”
Pohottuwa, Malimawa Leaders Criticize Sajith; Sajith Unveils Country Reawakening Plan
Dhammika Emerges as Pohottuwa’s Presidential Hopeful
Rannan’s Poll Sparks Controversy with Shift in Results
Mahinda Maintains Popularity Despite Challenges
Rannan’s winner ‘Anura’
Dr. Ravi Rannan Eliya was a relatively unknown figure in the country until about 6 to 7 months ago, with his name not ringing any bells among the people of Sri Lanka. However, his sudden emergence into the spotlight was spurred by a notable event – the upcoming presidential election. This newfound attention stemmed from a controversial opinion poll conducted and publicized by Rannan Eliya, which swiftly gained popularity due to its unexpected findings. According to this poll, JVP leader Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake was leading the pack with 51% support, followed by the Samagi Jana Balawegaya at 28%, and trailing behind were the Pohottuwa and United National Party.
The revelation of these results sparked significant attention, particularly from the JVP, who seized upon the opportunity for extensive publicity. JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva boldly declared that Anura Dissanayake’s victory was practically assured, citing the 51% support garnered from the latest poll. Alongside Tilvin, other JVP representatives such as Sunil Handunnetty and Nalinda Jayatissa publicly disseminated the poll’s findings, emphasizing the party’s perceived strong prospects for success.
Not bothered
Apart from this, all JVP supporters and anti-Sajaba groups started telling the country about the result of this opinion poll through their social media pages. YouTubers started showing this result on their YouTube channels. Even the people who claim to be the famous political commentators who write political articles in this country started to write political slurs on the pages of their newspapers citing the opinion poll of Rannan Eliya without any investigation. But no one was seen questioning who is Rannan Eliya, how his opinion poll was conducted, whether its results are acceptable, who is behind it, and what is its hidden agenda.
We found names
But the inside politics column which was not carried out by any media, was first engaged in finding out who these Rannan Eliya is?. There we came to know that this kind of opinion poll has been conducted by Mr. Rannan Eliya at the request of the President, and that this kind of result has been released with the aim of fulfilling the government’s agenda. Accordingly, we took steps to reveal to the country for the first time through this column that the hidden purpose of this opinion poll was to create an opinion that the JVP can be defeated if UNP and SJB join together.
Here’s what we said
A few months ago, we made a special disclosure in this column about the information of an opinion poll conducted by Dr. Rannan Eliya. It was mentioned in the poll that JVP leader Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake would win the next presidential election with 51%, and it was also seen that the poll drew interest of many embassies in the country. Also, political analysts were also seen using this opinion poll to criticize. But it could be seen that none of them had taken the information from the fruit without any investigation as to who these parties were. But when we found out who this Rannan Eliya is, we found out that he is an employee of Neelan Thiruchelvam Institute, and his scope is related to the health sector, not politics. Accordingly, we made a special disclosure in this regard, and said that this Rannan Eliya is fulfilling a contract to merger SJB and UNP, and by presenting false and totally unacceptable opinion polls, they are convincing the country that JVP can be defeated if SJB and UNP unite. After the discovery we made, it was seen that Rannan had closed the shop without conducting the poll for some time.
Out once again
However, this Rannan Eliya suddenly revealed a result of another opinion poll last week. This time he had conducted an opinion poll aimed at the general election. But the result was similar to the previous opinion poll. Accordingly, it was stated that the Janata Vimukti Peramuna-led National People’s Force will have 39% of power in the next general election, Samagi Jana Balavega will get 27%, Pohottuwa will get 10% of votes and UNP will get 6% of votes. Through that, Rannan had said without saying that if UNP and SJB unite, they can defeat the National People’s Force.
However, by submitting this opinion poll, Rannan had disclosed some information related to a previous opinion poll. It was mentioned that the last poll was conducted according to the funds received from Neelan Thiruchelvam Institute. But this time, it was not mentioned who has provided provisions for the opinion poll conducted by Rannan Eliya. Rannan Eliya should explain who pumped money into this poll. However, since the lie of the last opinion poll was surfaced, this time nobody seen discussing Rannan Eliya’s new opinion poll.’
The joke
However, the best joke here was witnessed during Anura Kumara’s visit to India. There, two prominent media organizations in India, ‘The Hindu’ and ‘NDTV’, quoted Rannan Eliya’s fake opinion poll and advertised that Anura was ahead. This Indian media also took steps to give great publicity to Anura’s visit to India.
However, not only we expose Rannan Eliya’s lie to the country, but after that we also revealed the correct results of an opinion poll conducted by an opinion polling agency recognized not only by the entire country but also internationally through the ‘inside politics’ column. The opinion polls conducted by this institution are so accurate that for the past 20 years, all political parties including the president, embassies etc. have accepted the opinion polls conducted by this institution. Accordingly, an opinion poll conducted by the same institution covering all other provinces except the North and the East revealed that Sajith-led SJB is at the top of the presidential election with 39% of the votes, while Anura is in second place with 20% of the votes. We pointed out that the report stated that Pohottuwa will get 9% of the votes, while Ranil-led UNP and Maithripala-led Sri Lankan Party will get 5% each. After Rannan Eliya’s fake opinion poll was released, although many parties challenged it, none of the parties came forward to challenge the opinion poll we revealed.
Ranil’s opinion poll
However, after the information of this opinion poll came out, the President’s fraction had given this institution to conduct another opinion poll. But the result was also the result of the previous opinion poll. Accordingly, it was further confirmed that the opinion poll conducted by Rannan Eliya was a blatant lie. Through this information, it was clearly confirmed that Sajith is leading not only the political sectors but also the embassies.
Several operations
Meanwhile, several political operations have been carried out by the government based on Rannan Eliya’s fake opinion poll. One of the operations was that when SJB was scared because Anura had been placed in front according to the opinion poll, a very subtle operation was launched behind the scenes to make SJB to defect to the government. In addition to this, a strong member of parliament who has left the party and is now an independent also ran another campaign with the support of the government and said that if a JVP government comes, the country will be a lake of blood because JVP is ahead. Everyone will have to go to jail. Especially meeting the business community and trade union leaders, this former SJB MP had shown them that in order to defeat JVP, SJB and UNP should join forces and launch a big fight. Some SJB MPs who were deceived by the words of that MP and some other SJB MPs who were deceived by the operation carried out by the government were on the fence in the past not knowing whether to join the government or not. But in the end, when we revealed the result of the actual opinion poll to the country, it was seen how all the MPs who were on the fence abandoned joining with Ranil and once again stood in line with Sajith. Through that, not only the operation led by the government, but also the operation led by the MP who left the party, collapsed completely. Also, after the revelation of the result of our latest opinion poll, it was seen that the spirit of the people was awakened at the village level and the city level at once.
The one who wears a tie
However, the MPs who could not bear this awakening were not the only ones who were not in the party. In particular, a certain member of parliament, who is wearing a tie coat and pretending to be a big character, could not bear the result, and at that time took steps to inform a few of his close friends that the result was wrong. Several people who spoke like that had taken steps to inform Sajith about the behavior of this tycoon character by making phone calls to Sajith. But Sajith didn’t seem to care too much. Later, a certain party made all the people whom this tie-coat-wearing member of parliament had talked to receive all the relevant information about the opinion poll. Accordingly, when they realized the truth of it, they saw how the operation carried out by the tie-coat-wearing MP had gone awry.
Latest poll
In addition to all these opinion polls, as we know, some intelligence services from time to time use their network spread across the country to conduct opinion polls and report to certain places. Accordingly, a few days ago, the information of an opinion poll conducted covering the entire country was given to the relevant parties by this intelligence service. According to the results of the poll, Sajith has got 41% of the votes, while JVP has reported 23% of the votes. According to the report, Pohottuwa had a 9% percent. Looking at the result, it is clearly similar to the results of the poll conducted by the International Polling Institute that we revealed earlier. Accordingly, according to the results of all these opinion polls, it has been confirmed that Mr. Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the opposition, is clearly ahead.
Rannan change
When we released the results of all the opinion polls one by one in this way, a situation had arisen where it was impossible for Rannan Elias, who had done a blatantly false opinion poll in the first place, to do anything. Accordingly, it was seen that Rannan Eliya had released the results of another opinion poll by last week. It was seen here that Anura Kumara, who claimed to get 51% of the votes in the first instance, has reported that within these few months, he has taken a big setback to 35%. Also, for the first time, the Sajith-led Samagi Jana Balawega has defeated Anura and has risen to 38%, Rannan revealed that Pohottuwa is at 8% and UNP is at 5%.
Those who said Anura switched to Sajith
Also mentioning another special point in his opinion poll, he said that although many people used to say ‘Anura, Anura’ when making phone calls in the past, now those people are tempted to mention Sajith’s name instead of Anura.
However, whatever opinion polls Rannan Eliya has done and changed the percentages in this way, we still say that he is really stating the results of the opinion polls in a way that is based on the needs of different people without any standards for his own existence. However, we are humbled to be proud of the fact that Rannan Eliya has finally accepted the media mission that we have carried out from the beginning by revealing the correct poll results to the country. That is because we have confirmed through this that we have disclosed the true information to our readers from the beginning. In the end, Rannan Eliya also had to accept that the information we revealed was true and further confirm that information.
Those who came to the UNP platform
Politics had heated up last week because of the efforts of political parties to hold May rallies in Colombo. More than being interested in the people coming to Colombo from the respective parties, most of the people were interested in seeing who the MPs were due to the propaganda carried by the UNP leaders that a large number of MPs from other parties were going to join the UNP May rally platform. In particular, UNP General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara said that a large group of SJB will join the UNP May Rally on May Day. Previously, Range had made a special statement to the media and had invited SJB economic experts Harsha, Kabir and Eran to rejoin the UNP. But Kabir directly denied it and told the media that he has no need to rejoin UNP and will continue his political journey with SJB. Harsha had told the media that the life of this government is only 6 more months.
Apart from this, Harin Fernando, who rejoined the UNP from SJB, also mentioned in the media that a group of MPs is ready to get on the May Day platform of the UNP. In addition, UNP Deputy Leader Ruwan Wijayawardena said while addressing the media in his constituency, Biyagama, that on May Day, a big ‘political explosion’ will be witnessed by all.
His family newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’ newspaper had vividly reported that Ruwan said in Biagama that the country will be able to see the representatives of several political parties on the UNP May Day stage and through that a big change will take place on that day. Accordingly, everyone was waiting to see who will be the SJB MPs who will step on the UNP platform on May Day as Ranga, Harin and Ruvan said. But in the end, no SJB MP got into UNP platform. There were people like Vadivel Suresh and Diana Gamage who had joined the government some time ago. In particular, many thought that people like Prasanna Ranatunga, Kanchana Wijesekera, Ramesh Pathirana, Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Pavithra Vanniarachchi, Prasanna Ranaweera, who had publicly declared their support for Ranil in the upcoming presidential election, would be seen on the UNP platform. But they were also seen on the budd stage.
Dhammika in a Prominat place
Pohottuwa celebrated the May Rally this year at Borella Campbell park. Since this was the first May rally and main meeting organized by Namal after taking over the post of National Organizer, Namal gave more weight to it. Also, last week we made a special disclosure and reported that Pohottuwa is planning to give some hint regarding the presidential candidate on the May Day platform this year. As we revealed, Basil had given a prominent place to millionaire businessman Dhammika Perera at the Pohottu stage this time. That is through arrangements to give Dhammika a front row seat on the stage. Basil had given the seat between Namal and Basil to Dhammika.
Also, the most impressive character on the Pohottu May Day stage was none other than former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It was seen that the attraction that Mahinda had then is still the same today because when Mahinda stepped on the stage as usual, the party members and MPs surrounded Mahinda and greeted him. Especially with the arrival of Mahinda, it was seen that there was a great awakening in the party members. Apart from this, it was notable to see that ministers like Kanchana, Ramesh, and Mahindananda, who always praised Ranil, gave their comments praising Mahinda. However, it was seen here how many people congratulated Basil for building a strong situation to hold a May rally in a short period of two years, a party that had collapsed to zero due to the people’s ‘struggle’ and a party that ran away from the presidency.
A wave of cheers
This year JVP had organized four major May rallies in four districts Colombo, Matale, Matara and Anuradhapura. According to JVP analysis, the best meeting was held in Matara.
However, according to the information we have, the two May rallies that had the highest participation were the SJB May Rally and the JVP May Rally. According to official reports, more than 45,000 people have participated in the SJB May rally held on Chatham Street in which Sajith participated. That number is only the people gathered in and around Chatham Street, where the May rally was held, and in addition, official reports have informed the responsible places that a huge group of partisans were waiting on buses and main roads, unable to even reach the meeting ground.
According to those reports, 30,000 people participated in the JVP rallies. The reports indicated that 15,000 people participated in the May rally in Pohottu and 12,000 in the UNP May rally.
Fonseka appears and disappears
Some media had reported several special events during the SJB May rally. One of the main ones was that SJB Chairman Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka was reported to have left the meeting shortly after arriving. The reason for this was nothing else but the fact that Fonseka was not given a speech at the SJB May rally. Sujeewa Senasinghe, who was one of the main organizers of the May Rally, later stated that Fonseka was not given a speech because he did not contribute to the organizing of the May Rally. Apart from this, Thalatha Athukorala was not seen on the stage of SJB May Day. The reason was that Talatha was currently abroad.
What happened to Rajitha?
Also, some media had reported that Rajitha Senaratne also did not participate in the SJB May rally. Rajitha did not participate because he had undergone some surgery recently. Instead of Rajitha, his wife Sujatha Senaratne had joined the SJB May rally with a large group of Kalutha party members.
May Day in Plantation
In addition, something should be said about the two May rallies held in the plantation. One of these rallies was organized by Jeevan Thondaman, a government cabinet minister in Kotagala area. The President was the chief guest. The second meeting was organized by Palani Digambaram, the SJB a leader of the plantation. Mr. Sajith Premadasa, the opposition leader, was the chief guest at the May rally held in Talawakele. At first glance, a huge number of people participated in the Thalawakele meeting organized by Digambaram. There, for the first time, Sajith addressed the people in Tamil and gave an explanation on how to make the plantation people into plantation owners under a future government. It was seen that the people gathered there gave a high response to Sajith by continuously applauding.
Ranil’s 1,700
A statement made by the President at Jeevan Thondaman’s rally held in Kotagala has managed to stir up the plantations sector. That is the President’s statement that the government had issued the gazette to raise the daily wages of plantation workers to 1,700 rupees the day before. When the president said that, the gathered plantation workers cheered and applauded, but few hours after the president said that, the plantation employers union issued a statement saying that their union was not aware of such a thing. It had also been mentioned that the Estate Employers’ Association would take action before the court against the Gazette, which claimed that such a salary could not be given.
According to this, now, Jeevan Thondaman, the estate labor representative of the government, has faced a serious problem. Jeevan Thondaman will have to suffer from this bomb dropped by the President when he came to the plantation. Because the President says that Jeevan Thondaman has to answer the questions of the plantation workers when they do not get the daily salary of 1,700 rupees.
Blame continued on Sajith
However, this time a certain common thing was seen in all the three main May rallies. It is nothing but the fact that Ranil-Mahinda-Anura have allocated more time to criticize the opposition leader Mr. Sajith Premadasa in the UNP May Rally, the May Rally in Pohottuwa and the JVP May Rally. We will not mention here why Ranil, Mahinda and Anura continued to attack Sajith on their May Day platforms. It is up to the readers to figure it out. But Sajith did not attack anyone in his May Day speech. Instead, Sajith put forward the country-building plan to the people.
A new game plan
The government had planned to use the topic of successful foreign debt restructuring as a major trump card in the upcoming elections. The government had prepared plans to make it a big trump card in the presidential election by showing that Sri Lanka had won a big victory. But last week we made a special disclosure and said through the inside politics column that the government’s foreign debt restructuring program has completely failed and China, the main creditor of Sri Lanka, has expressed disapproval of the proposal presented by the Paris Club. Accordingly, we pointed out that the restructuring of foreign debt is currently at a point where China and the Paris Club in disagreement and due to this the country it is a disadvantage for the government.
However, this time we are going to tell about a new operation launched by the government after the failure of the foreign debt restructuring program. The government has currently planned not to implement one program related to the restructuring of foreign debt, but to implement one related program with the Paris Club and another program with China. Or to implement the foreign debt restructuring program under two policies.
But it is not known that any country in the world has implemented two such programs regarding the restructuring of foreign debt. Needless to say, if that happens, it will seriously affect the debt agreements that each country has with other countries. On the other hand, the International Monetary Fund has also informed that everyone should file under one program. But under the current crisis situation, the government has planned to reach an agreement to implement two loan programs with China and Paris society as its last trump card.
‘SLFP’ rift to the peak
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party organized a May Day rally in Gampaha amid serious controversy. By now, two factions of the party have been seen in the open, and it can be seen that both parties have resorted to court action to confirm the legality of their positions. The Nimal Siripala party has already taken a court decision against the chairmanship of Mr. Maithripala Sirisena, and the Nimal Siripala party has also taken a court order against the Minister of Justice Wijayadasa Rajapaksa, who was later appointed by the Maithripala party as acting chairman. However, under such circumstances, Mr. Wijayadasa Rajapaksa mentioned that he will present himself as his party’s presidential candidate while participating in the Gampaha May Rally.
Nimal Siripala and Maithripala groups split and quarreled in public, but recently the representatives of both sides seen having a very friendly chat in the high sky of Colombo. We said Colombo high in the sky because this discussion was held from the revolving restaurant of Nelum Kuluna, which is considered the highest tower in Sri Lanka. After a discussion, a special ceremony was held there. It was organized to mark 25 years of Foreign Minister Ali Sabri’s career as a lawyer. In addition to Justice Minister Wijayadasa Rajapaksa, Nimal Siripala and Mahinda Amaraweera, who represent his counterpart in the case before the court, were also present. Accordingly, there was a very cordial conversation between Wijayadasa, Nimal Siripala and Amaraweera. There, Nimal Siripala directly told Wijayadasa that he has no problem with Wijayadasa, the problem is with Maithripala Sirisena. Nimal Siripala and Amaravira told Wijayadasa that they have no problem working together with Wijayadasa.
Romesh too attend
At that time President’s Counsel Romesh de Silva, who is Wijaydasa’s lawyer, was sitting a little further from Wijayadasa. Accordingly, Wijayadasa invited Romesh to join the discussion and informed him to listen to Nimal Siripalala’s story.
However, this case was called last Thursday, and Romesh was seen presenting several special legal arguments on behalf of Wijayadasa in the court. The court decided to adjourn the verdict until the 7th. However, after this discussion, one of the things that many people said was that regardless of the court decision, there is a possibility that Nimal Siripalala and Wijayadasa will unite in the future.
Ban on Ranil
In addition to this, another special court decision was also given by the Supreme Court last week. That is through the Supreme Court issuing an interim order so that no judge except the Chief Justice can be appointed to the Supreme Court until next October.
The latest on the debate
The topic of Sajith-Anura face-to-face debate has been a hot topic everywhere in the country for the past few weeks, but due to the lukewarm response from the JVP side, the topic is also somewhat lukewarm now. When SJB first challenged the JVP economic committee to come to a debate, the answer received from the JVP side was that since this is a presidential election, the debate should be held between Anura and Sajith. Although JVP thought that Sajith would avoid the debate through that, what happened was that Sajith made a statement that he was ready for the debate within a few hours of that unlike JVP. As a result, the JVP realized that the trump card was wrong, and from then on, it was seen that various subterfuges were used to disrupt the debate. The first of which was the name of the president who was not even involved in the debate. It was done by Harini Amarasuriya. Accordingly, Harini said that since this is a presidential election, all three main candidates should debate together.
Shortly after this announcement, another special incident happened. That is the newspaper of the President’s uncle, ‘Daily Mirror’, published news that it was ready to set the stage for the debate. When both sides expressed their interest in the Sajith-Anura debate, the three main channels Sirasa, Hiru, and Derana expressed their willingness to telecast it live, and the newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’, owned by the president’s family, which does not have an electronic channel to broadcast the debate between Sajith-Anura, step in to broadcast it. There was a special reason for this.
The other biggest joke noted here was when Sirasa, Hiru and Derana channels expressed their willingness to broadcast the Anura-Sajith debate, JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva was silent without saying a word, declared that he agreed to the same newspaper when the Daily Mirror took over to broadcast the Ranil-Sajith-Anura debate. Many people think that the behind-the-scenes political deal to disrupt the Anura-Sajith debate was exposed through that.
On the same platform
Since the day Mr. Ranil Wickramasinghe assumed the office of the President, an operation that has been carried out by the government has been to gather members of the Samagi Jana Balawega into the government. On many occasions, it has been said by the government that twenty or thirty MPs from SJB are to join the government. But not a single MP from twenty or thirty of SJB joined the government.
With the failure of that operation, the next operation on Ranil’s side was to reunite Sajith with Ranil if the MPs could not be downloaded to the government. Several members of the UNP and several members of the party have tried all along to counter this, but Sajith has kept saying that he will never join forces with Mr. Ranil Wickramasinghe, that he will not make a deal with Ranil, and that no one will try to do so.
Although the people on both sides could not bring Ranil-Sajith together, a few days ago a big operation was launched behind the scenes to bring Ranil-Sajith-Anura together. The initiative for that was taken by none other than the Association of Professional Teachers or Tuition Masters which is a tuition master’s collective in this country. They wanted to put Ranil-Sajith-Anura on the same platform and discuss the country’s problems. Accordingly, after presenting this proposal to all three president accepted the proposal. It may be due to the opportunity for the President to appear in the same photo with Sajith and Anura instead of debating with them.
However, despite the green light from the President’s side, Sajith and Anura did not agree to it to be at the same time in one stage. Since there are a large number of people supporting both Sajith and Anura in this association, it was impossible to refuse the invitation, so alternative proposals were presented from both sides. Although both Sajith and Anura expressed their reluctance to get on the same stage with the President, they did not refuse to participate in the event.
Accordingly, in the end, it was decided to call the three people to the stage in three different time slots, even though it was the same stage. Accordingly, they informed the President’s side that they should attend the ceremony at three to four in the evening and leave at exactly 4 in the evening. After that, Sajith attended the ceremony from four to five delivered his speech and left at exactly five. The time allotted to Anura was from five to six in the evening.
When a crucial presidential election was around the corner, the tuition masters tried to bring Ranil-Sajith-Anura on the same stage at the same time. Still, at the end of the day, the ‘one-time’ move was lost and it was limited to the ‘one stage’, but all three came to the same stage at three different times and spoke from the same microphone.