President’s ‘National Government’ is a ‘Straw for a Drowning Man’
It is No Secret Who the Mastermind of the Well-Known FR Petition Is
Government’s Matara Rally Exposes the Split
The Good news?
President Ranil Wickremesinghe had finally decided to pursue a foreign debt restructuring program, despite not having officially announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election. He planned to complete the program and then launch a major campaign to declare his candidacy. Initially, he intended to make a special announcement on the 26th, stating that the country had been saved from bankruptcy, and follow it with an emergency parliamentary session on the 27th and 28th to debate and pass a resolution, subsequently announcing his presidential bid. Posters with the slogan ‘Aranchiya Subai’ were put up nationwide, and celebrations involving firecrackers and milk rice were planned following his address.
However, when the opposition learned of the government’s plans, they took steps to present the true situation of debt restructuring to the public. As a result, the government’s ‘Aranchiya Subai’ campaign was completely derailed, and they were unable to garner the anticipated support.
The government initially planned to convene Parliament on the 27th and 28th to discuss the debt restructuring program. However, this plan was disrupted by Dr. Harsha De Silva, the chairman of the State Finance Committee. Dr. De Silva insisted that the related agreement must be presented to Parliament before any discussion could take place. Moreover, for Parliament to consider it, the agreement first needed approval from the Finance Committee.
In response, the President called Dr. De Silva, urging him to approve the proposal in the Finance Committee. Dr. De Silva objected, stating that the agreement should be submitted to the Finance Committee first. The President explained that he could not provide the agreement to the Finance Committee or Parliament as a final agreement had not yet been reached with the sovereign bondholders. Given this situation, Dr. De Silva maintained that the proposal could not be approved by the Finance Committee. Consequently, the government’s plan to convene Parliament on the 27th and 28th and pass the debt restructuring proposal fell apart.
Under this background, the government finally decided that instead of debating for two days, the Parliament was convened on the second day and the President made a special statement to end the parliamentary proceedings without a debate. Accordingly, an emergency meeting of party leaders was called under the chairmanship of the speaker, and the representatives of the government stated that there would be no two-day debate or polling on the resolution, and that the president would only make a special statement and end the parliamentary proceedings. However, the chief organizer of the opposition Mr. Lakshman Kiriella said that if the president makes a special statement, the opposition leader should also be allowed to answer it. With the approval of the government, it was decided to convene the parliament, especially on the second day.
However, the plan of the government was to show a big show to the country after the President made a special statement on the second day by bringing some members of the opposition to the government. To prepare the background for this, a special news was published on the front page of Sunday Lankadeepa newspaper belonging to the president’s uncle Mr Ranjith Wijayawardena and cousin Mr. Ruwan Wijayawardena, and on the second day, news was published that 4 members of the opposition are to join the government. Steps were also taken to include the names of Sarath Fonseka, Rajitha Senaratne and Champika Ranawaka in the news. However, in the end, none of the members of the opposition joined the government, confirming that the Lankadeepa news was completely false.
On the other hand, since the opposition leader Sajith Premadasa had the opportunity to answer the President’s speech in the parliamentary session that day, he came to the parliament armed with all the information. Accordingly, the President, as usual, once again recalled the speeches he had made since the day he assumed the office of President in the Parliament, where the President targeted Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and launched a strong attack on the representatives of NPP. Usually, when the President makes a special statement in Parliament, the opposition does not interfere with it, but at one point in the speech, when the President said, ‘Are you telling me to break the Central Bank of England?’
Apart from this, Sajith launched a powerful attack targeting the President’s speech in his reply speech. The attack was so strong that on several occasions the President stood up saying that he needed to answer Sajith’s speech. As a result of this, a heated face-to-face conversation between the President and Sajith ended up turning into a regular parliamentary meeting rather than a special statement by the President. Accordingly, in the end, that special parliamentary meeting ended without any benefit to the country. However, the story of breaking the Central Bank of England, knowingly or unknowingly from the President’s mouth, has gained a lot of publicity in the social media.
Hakeem meets Ranil
It has become a common occurrence in the past for the opposition MPs to go to the President’s office and hold discussions on the days when the President is in Parliament. Also, the discussions regarding the inclusion of MPs from the opposition to the government were held in the President’s parliamentary office. In the past, Sajith had even received a list of the names of the opposition MPs who frequented this room, and some MPs even informed Sajith of the times of their visits. Also, we have received a list of names of opposition MPs dealing with the President since of late, and we have mentioned on many occasions before that we are ready to release the list of these MPs to the people of the country as soon as a general election is called.
However, during the parliamentary meeting held on Tuesday, Muslim Congress leader Mr Rauf Hakeem, who was with Sajith, received a special message from the President. That is to come to his parliament room and meet him. After receiving this message, Hakeem informed Sajith about this. Sajith also informed Hakeem to meet the President without raising any objections. According to the information we have, the president has invited Hakeem to join the government in this discussion. But Hakeem has rejected the proposal saying that the government has not done any work for the Muslim people for the last two years and that the government has not fulfilled the expectations. Therefore, the news is that Hakeem has ended the discussion by saying that he is more likely to support Sajith in the upcoming presidential election.
There are many reasons why Hakeem gave this kind of response to the President. It was mainly because Hakeem’s MPs were brought from the President’s Secretariat without informing Hakeem in the past saying that they were for some discussions. Hakeem was very angry when the information was reported in this regard. On several occasions, Hakeem publicly said in different places, ‘This is a very ugly thing. It is wrong to bring our MPs to the President’s Secretariat and give them various privileges without informing the party leaders. This should be stopped immediately…’ he said. Accordingly, in the end, Hakeem has given the reply to the President.
Let’s form a national government
Meanwhile, another special topic that no one knows about was presented last week by the opposition party leaders which stems from the government. That is a national government proposal. This national government proposal was presented at the same time as the president made a special statement in the parliament, and after the president’s speech in the parliament, it was pointed out that it was a victory for the country and the original plan was to form a national government. Accordingly, certain parties have taken steps to present this proposal to SJB, Pohottuwa and other minor parties.
However, this topic was brought to the fore at the meeting of SJB MPs held in Parliament on Tuesday morning. There, Buddhika presented this national government proposal to the group of MPs and took steps to pass a proposal to reject it. From the information we have, it is said that this proposal was not submitted and adopted just for the sake of doing but this was done with the knowledge of top leaders of SJB.
However, when SJB’s proposal was revealed by the media, the main partner party of the government, Pohottuwa, also took steps to reject this proposal. It was at the press conference held by Rohitha Abeygunawardena. There, Rohitha said that it is not appropriate to create a national government at the moment of preparing for the presidential election, it is not practical.
However, the biggest attack on the government’s proposal for a national government came from none other than Mano Ganesan of the Dravida Progressive Party. Mano said that on many occasions he had informed the President to hold both the North and East Provincial Council elections and that he should take steps to give the right of land to the Tamil people in the plantations. But Mano said that the President has not done anything to the Tamil people, and said that this is why the national government talk will not be successful at this time. Accordingly, it was seen that the government’s plan also failed.
5 or 6 years?
With the failure of the national government proposal, a fundamental rights petition was submitted to the Supreme Court, which surprised everyone and asked for an interpretation as to whether the term of office of the President is 5 or 6 years. This was presented by a resident of Panadura area who is not much known. He is an entrepreneur named D. C. Lenawa. Mr. Lenawa had forwarded this petition to the Supreme Court, but earlier a similar proposal had been submitted by none other than UNP General Secretary Range Bandara. Range had earlier held a press conference and said that everyone should come together and allow the President to run the country for another 2 years. But with the strong opposition at that time, Range stopped talking about it.
The petition presented by Mr. Lenawa was strongly protested by all the opposition parties. In particular, SJB and NPP publicly said that they are ready to present their facts before the court against the petition. A special announcement was issued by the Presidential Media Division on Thursday as the opposition’s opposition intensified. It stated that the President’s position is that the term of office of the President is 5 years, and accordingly, the decision taken by the Election Commission to hold the 2024 presidential election is correct. Accordingly, it is believed by many that whoever is behind Lenawa will fail in the attempt to postpone the Presidential election by another year.
Matara news
We have mentioned before that many programs were planned by the government from the address to the nation on the 26th when preparing the schedule for the presidential election. Another important one was the Matara meeting organized by Minister Kanchana Wijesekera on the 30th. This meeting was cancelled on several occasions and was finally scheduled for the 30th as it was the first meeting to be held after the President’s address to the nation to bring a large number of people to it. Although Pohottuwa had given notice to the seat organizers to boycott this meeting, Kanchana had taken steps to call them all again and inform them to participate in the meeting.
Ranil had entrusted the organization of this meeting to Matara Kanchan himself because Kanchan worked very closely with the President within the government. In the past, the president had put in Kanchana’s head, ‘You can be the leader of the village one day. To be such a leader, you must be married.’ Because of this, Kanchana had been away from Pohottuva for a long time and was busy trying to win over Ranil. Through this meeting, the President also intended to show that Kanchana can go on a journey without Pohottuwa and that he can also go on a political journey without Pohottuwa’s support. However, in this Matara meeting, many special events were seen on the stage. This time, in the ‘Inside politics’ column, we are going to talk about those events that no one knew.
The first incident was that a serious question arose regarding Nuvan Taraka, who had handed over the notices of Kanchana’s meeting. Nuvan Tharaka is Namal’s favourite announcer who has been making announcements at the Balamandal meetings organized by Pohottuwa for a long time. Prasanna Ranatunga had informed the group at the beginning of the meeting that since they had taken steps to organize a meeting at Gampaha Mirigama for Pohottuwa on the same day as the Matara meeting, they should allow him to speak at the beginning as he had to go to that meeting as well.
Accordingly, Prasanna was the first to speak in the meeting. However, when Prasanna was speaking, Nuvan Tarakata, who was on the stage, received a phone call from Sagara Kariyawasam of Pohottuwa. Accordingly, as soon as Prasanna’s speech was over, Nuvan Tharaka, who went to Prasanna’s side, said that Sagara scolded him and told him to get off the stage.
Accordingly, Prasanna immediately called Sagara. Why are you doing this brother? When Prasanna asked Sagara, “Aren’t we all going on this journey together?”, Sagara said, “No, he is also doing party announcement work. When that is the case, when he does where the president goes, there will be a conflict. That’s why I said that.’ Not satisfied with Sagara’s reply, Prasanna immediately called Namal to inform him about this. Namal said that he would look into it.
However, some people who know about this matter say that Pohottuwa has done this on purpose to create a conflict on the President’s stage. But some others claim that Nuvan Tharaka made such announcements not to create a conflict, but actually for the President’s victory.
Although it was initially announced that most of the Ministers of Pohottuwa would participate in this meeting, only Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Premanath Dolawatta, Ajith Rajapaksa, Chintaka Mayadunne, Kanaka Herath, Rohana Dissanayake, Ali Sabri, Prasanna Ranatunga and Kanchana Wijesekera were on the stage at the beginning of the meeting. While they were on stage, it was seen that Pohottu was paying close attention to the meeting because Namal, who was in Mirigama, and Basil, who was in the Battaramulla Pohottu office, were working to find out about the Matara meeting from time to time.
In particular, someone on the Matara platform could be seen updating Basil and Namal every moment of what was happening there. He had taken steps to inform Namal and Basil about the number of Ministers from Pohottuwa who attended the Matara meeting, the number of chairs used for the meeting, the number of buses that had been brought outside the meeting, the number of people present at the meeting, etc. It was informed that people from outside provinces were brought and about 4,500 people gathered for the meeting. It was also informed that not only the members of Pohottuwa, but also a large number of UNP members from all over the country were present. According to these notifications, the strongmen of Pohottuva immediately calculated the number of party members Kanchana brought from Matara district alone. They had realized that the amount was very low.
This was further confirmed through a video circulated by the media the next day. The video showed a young woman asking the people who had come to the Matara meeting about their village province. There some said that they came from Kuliapitiya. Others said that 3 buses came from central Colombo and that they came in one of them. Others said that they came from Ratnapura. Accordingly, it was confirmed from the video that people from all over the country had been drawn to the meeting.
Distributed bags
The next incident was the revelation in the media that bags of goods had been distributed to bring people to the meeting. That was revealed to the country by SJB MP Buddhika Patiranaya. Buddhika, who came to a press conference with a bag of goods that had been distributed, said that a large number of bags of goods worth 2,515 rupees had been distributed throughout the district to bring people to the Matara meeting through Sathosa. Budhika asked who paid for these, who spent it, and how money was, found should be disclosed to the country immediately.
The other special event that came to be seen in the Matara meeting was that the speaker representing Matara, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena and Nipuna Ranawaka did not attend the meeting. Before attending the meeting, the President had lunch at Kanchana Wijesekara’s house inside the Matara Fort. The news is that the President came to the meeting after taking a short nap after lunch. However, shortly after the meeting started, a person on the stage received a message saying that Mr Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, who did not attend the meeting, was listening to the meeting with a window open from his house. As Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene’s house is located very close to the ground where the meeting took place, upon receiving this message, most of the people on the platform were seen peeking at the house.
However, after the meeting was over, MPs such as Kanchana Wijesekera, Mahindananda, Dolawatta, etc. had walked to the Matara Inn, which was a little away from it, to drink tea. As they were drinking tea, the councillors were suddenly shocked by what they saw. That is because Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, who was believed listening to the meeting from his home, was also present at the Matara Inn at that moment. Accordingly, it was seen how Mahinda Yapa joined Pohottuwa MPs to drink tea.
Meanwhile, another special figure who was seen at the President’s meeting in Matara was Southern Governor Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena. Generally, governors should work independently without political affairs, but last week, due to a certain matter that Lakshman Yapa had done, the political field itself was on fire. According to the instructions received from the President’s Secretariat, former chairmen and councillors of the local government bodies were given coordination positions to supervise the projects implemented by the governor’s office.
Lakshman Yapa had arranged for the posts to be given to the chairpersons of the former local government bodies in this way when the local government bodies had been dissolved and the election had been called and the nominations had not yet been cancelled. Although the other governors also received these instructions from the President’s office, they did not make any written request, and because those activities were illegal, those governors did not proceed to make the relevant appointments. But the information that we have come to know says that after Lakshman Yapa of the South made these appointments, the Governor of the Central Province has also made several such appointments.
However, when this information was reported, representatives of Sajabaya and Malima immediately went to the Election Commission to inform them about this. Accordingly, the commission also stated that it is illegal to provide such positions even after the election has been declared, and steps should be taken to suspend those positions immediately.
According to that, with the matter being ignited, by now other governors have also sent the orders received from above to the Attorney General’s Department to seek advice.
Open conflict
However, after this meeting held in Matara, it was seen that Pohottua and the government had fallen to the point of open attacks. In particular, Sagara Kariyawasam, Secretary General of Pohottuwa publicly said in the media that if Ranil wants to get the candidacy of Pohottuwa, he should first get the membership of Pohottuwa. Sagara said that only then can Ranil be considered for the presidential candidacy. It was also seen how the ministers of Pohottuwe who are in the government responded in some places.
Mahinda receives messages
In this way, when there were continuous verbal attacks between the government and Pohottuwa, it was seen how two or three groups from the President’s side went to Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Wijerama house and Mr Basil Rajapaksa’s Battaramulla house with different messages. The news we are receiving says that the President’s side is in deep turmoil due to these attacks. In the past, the President was ready to stand in the upcoming elections without showing the Rajapaksas too much and only with the support of Pohottuwa. But under the current situation, it has become a problem whether the Rajapaksas will leave room for such a thing.
Namal’s discussion
Another special event that confirms this came out last Wednesday. It was in a meeting chaired by Namal at his home in Wijerama. Namal had called the press secretaries of all Cabinet Ministers and State Ministers in Pohottuwa for this meeting. Although there was a significant group of ministers, less than 15 press secretaries participated in the discussion. It was a special event that Nuwan Tharaka, who had participated in the announcements at the Matara stage, was also present at this discussion which was held with a dinner.
The gathering asked Namal what was going to happen in the future. Namal, who gave his usual answer in front of the media, took steps to add another new matter for the first time.
The latest theory
Let’s all continue to work. We haven’t made a final decision about it yet. Ranil has told us that he will take 25 MPs from Samagi Jana Balavega to the government. He has postponed that. But that is not going to happen. On the day of the special announcement in Parliament last Tuesday, the President told us that Fonseka, Rajitha and Champika would join the government on that day. We were also waiting for those people to come. But it didn’t happen.”, the press secretaries asked what Ranil would do if he could save such a group. Namal gave a strange answer.
If that is the case, we will have to support Ranil. But we have made an option for that too. In that case, the 2015 how J.V.P. supported Maithripala Sirisena, we also supported Ranil. We will be going around the country for Ranil without fielding a candidate. If necessary, we can hold 10 to 15 meetings at the district level sitting on one platform.” Namal is revealed here. Accordingly, Pohottuwa has prepared some theories about how all the Rajapaksas will campaign for Ranil if Pohottuwa decides to support Ranil in the future.
Businessmen are with Sajith
Meanwhile, a very secret discussion was held in Colombo last week under the chairmanship of the opposition leader Mr. Sajith Premadasa. Twenty of the top businessmen in Sri Lanka participated in this meeting, which was not revealed to any media. According to a joint request made by these twenty people, Sajith had taken steps to hold the relevant meeting. The most special event that was seen there was the presence of many businessmen who were friendly to Pohottuwa and Malima in the past season.
At the beginning of this meeting, the businessmen strongly requested Sajith not to give any information to the media. Accordingly, after we received the information about this meeting, we investigated what influenced these businessmen to request such a meeting with Sajith. There we learned that according to the opinion polls conducted by certain institutions and individuals in the past, information has been reported that Sajith is in the lead, and according to the current grassroots information, information has been reported to them that Sajith will win the presidential election, which led to this meeting. that there is
Harsha has also come
However, Sajith did not attend this meeting alone. Sajith attended the meeting accompanied by five MPs in charge of the economy, including Harsha de Silva, an economic expert. It is reported that Sajith, Harsha and all who participated in the meeting gave clear answers when these businessmen questioned Sajab’s economic policy for hours. According to the information we have, it is said that these twenty people, who are among the top businessmen in Sri Lanka, are very impressed with the answers given by Sajith and others.
