Dayasiri Jayasekara, the secretary of the party, has stated that he, as the party’s general secretary, does not know what is happening in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Sri Lanka Latest News
He says that many things are happening in the party now that he does not even know.
The MP says that some problems will arise when you are too active. He is of the opinion that the same has happened to the post of secretary of Sri Lanka Freedom Party.
“A few people are trying to remove me from the post of SLNP General Secretary and push the party to where they want. If I am the obstacle to push the party to where they want, their first task is to remove me. However, in this situation, I believe that the majority of the party will make decisions based on the right opinion,” said Dayasiri Jayasekara.
Last week ‘Inside Politics’ column revealed about this
What Maithri did
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party is a huge party that ruled this country for 25 years and produced the world’s first female prime minister and two presidents. Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the world’s first Prime Minister who was from Sri Lankan freedom Party. The two presidents were Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. Such a strong party’s downfall began in 2015 when Mr. Maithripala Sirisena, who was the party’s general Secretary at the time, left the party and joined with the UNP to compete for the presidency.
Maithrie, who won the presidential election with the help of the UNP, later managed to take over the leadership of the Sri Lankan National Party almost by force. Later, Maithri also took steps to form the Sri Lanka freedom Party – UNP good governance government by giving Cabinet Ministerships to several members of the Sri Lankan Party. At the end of 2019, when Maithri stepped down from the presidency, Maithri had worked to reduce the number of MPs of the party over one hundred MPs to twelve MPs. After that, Maitri contested the parliamentary elections from the presidency and came back to the parliament as an ordinary member.
In general, Maithri is considered as a leader who says one thing today, another tomorrow, and does something completely different from what he said. Or as a politician who doesn’t do what he says and suddenly changes his colour. Maitri, who accused the entire Rajapaksa family during the 2015 presidential election, said that after the presidential election, the thefts would be exposed and the Rajapaksa family would be jailed. In the end, instead of catching the thefts of the Rajapaksas, Maithri brought Mahinda through the back door and proceeded to re-appoint him as the Prime Minister. In another instance, he said Maithri formed new party, that party would make the Rajapaksas walk on the streets. In the end, Maithri had to compete in the general election from the same ‘pot’ established under the leadership of the Rajapaksa and enter the parliament as a mere member of parliament.
When Mr. Ranil Wickramasinghe was elected by Parliament as the President after Gota’s resignation, Maithri attended a party’s Central Committee meeting and decided that no one from the Sri Lankan Freedom Party would be a minister in Ranil’s government. But going beyond the party’s decision, a group including Nimal Siripala de Silva, Mahinda Amaraweera, Lasantha Alagiyawanna, Chamara Sampath Dasanayake joined forces with Ranil. Maithrie took strict disciplinary action against them and remove them from the party by cancelling all their positions and removing them from the party. However subsequently , Maithrie took steps to suspend all the disciplinary measures imposed on Nimal Siripala and Amaraweera and call them back for the party’s meetings.
Maithrie did so in a background where a group including Party General Secretary Mr. Dayasiri Jayasekara was adamant that the decision taken by the party should continue to be implemented. Dayasirila’s position was that instead of joining a government that does not have the support of the people and taking positions, they should join the opposition and create a populist government. In this regard, Dayasiri and the SLFP team had also participated in many rounds of discussions between the opposition parties.
In this way, there are several issues that many people doubt regarding the re-joining of Nimal Siripala and Amaraweera, who were suddenly removed from the party by Maithri. One of them is the spread of rumors that Maithri is very afraid of the accusations against Maithri based on the Easter attack. Maithri has already received a court order to pay more than one crore rupees compensation for the Easter victims from his personal money. Many people are of the opinion that it is because of that fear that Maithri has taken steps to bring the Sri Lankan freedom Party ministers close to him.
Another decision is made
However, due to the influence of these ministers who took positions together in the government, Maithrie took another controversial decision last week. That is about the upcoming party conference. In the last Central Committee meeting, a decision was taken to hold this year’s party conference in Kurunegala ,Hettipola constituency, which was the district of Party General Secretary Dayasiri. After taking that decision, for the last few weeks Dayasiri had made great sacrifices to hold the Conference in a grand manner and to make it successful, holding meetings, informing the party members and taking further measures. Moreover, Dayasiri had even sent invitations to the leaders of the party, the seat organizers, Kurunegala Maha Sagaah and the general public, inviting them to come to the conference.
But last week, Maithrie, who suddenly spoke to Dayasiri, said that some security problem has arisen regarding the holding of the Srilanaka freedom Party Conference in Hettipola. There, Maithri told Dayasiri that the government ministers are also going to participate in this year’s party conference, and they have received information that some people are preparing to boo them in an organized manner.
Dayasiri,there is a small problem with the Hettipola Federation. Those who became ministers in the government have promised to come to the conference. But they have a little fear that Johnny will come here and yell at them. So they say let’s hold the conference in Colombo without Kurunegala. But Dayasiri, who spoke without showing it, said that there is no chance of such a thing happening.
‘How can that happen? This is my seat. Johnny doesn’t have the strength to come here. Now I have finished organizing the conference headquarters. The invitations have been sent. Therefore, it cannot be changed…’ but Maithri said again that since there is a problem regarding security, arrangements should be made to hold the conference in Colombo. But no final decision was taken at that time.
Drags Chandrica
After this incident, former President Chandrika Kumaratunga was the second trump that Maithri played to bring the party conference from Kuranegal to Colombo. There was a close political friendship between Maithri and Chandrika until 2015, and it is believed by many that Chandrika was the one who rescued Maithri from the Rajapaksas and took him out of the government. The Maithri-Chandrika friendship started to deteriorate when Maithri again conspired to join the Rajapaksas. After that, the conflict between Maithri and Chandrika was seen in the open, and Maithri publicly accused Chandrika. Chandrika also publicly accused Maithri. In short, both of them washed their clothes in public.
But a few months ago, we revealed in the ‘Inside Politics’ column that there had been some exchange of messages between Maithri and Chandrika in the past. We pointed out that the SLFP ministers who are connected to the government are acting as mediators and that this group has the idea of getting Chandrika’s support for the new alliance that Ranil Wickramasinghe is planning to form to make him president again. We mentioned there that their plan is to bring Maithri and Chandrika to this alliance.
Under this background, the SLFP ministers are now ready to bring the satellite to the SLFP conference. Their aim is to bring Chandrika back into the party and strengthen the SLFP. It is reported that Chandrika has also stated that if she is given considerable power in the reorganization efforts of the SLFP, she can come forward for that.
Accordingly, Maithrie spoke to Dayasiri again last week and took steps to use the ‘Chandrika trump’ to bring the party conference from Kurunegala to Colombo. There Maithri said that Chandrika was also going to participate in the conference, but because Kurunegala was too far away, Chandrika was reluctant to participate.
Individual opinion
Dayasiri is the big problem. Chandrika would like to come to the conference. But they say it is difficult to come because the distance is too far. When Maithri said, “If we are in Colombo, we will come…”, Dayasiri also said that all arrangements have been made to hold the conference, and if it is too far for Chandrika to participate in the conference, they can send a helicopter or arrange to bring her there.
In this way, when Maithri’s attempt to take the convention to Colombo by presenting various excuses to Dayasiri failed, Maithri issued an announcement to his party and informed that he decided to hold the party convention in Colombo ‘for security reasons’. The most special occurrence here was that neither members like Dayasiri as party general secretary or members like Shan Vijayalal, who are currently remaining in the Sri Lankan Freedom Party, were unaware that Maithri was issuing such an announcement. Accordingly, Maithrie has decided to hold the party conference shifting it from Kurunegala to Colombo Monarch Imperial Hotel in Thalavathugoda, a luxury luxury hotel in Colombo.
However, with the reporting of this information, we were also engaged in investigating the political position of involvement of Chandrika again. There we learned that Chandrika has expressed her willingness to join the SLFP Convention platform under the condition that she will be given full power to carry out the reorganising the party. There is also rumour that Chandrika has informed that she is not ready to stand on the stage and waive her hand in vain.
Will there be a fight?
However, it is also reported that nearly 90% of the party’s constituency organizers have expressed strong opposition to the Maithri single-mindedly shifting the party conference to Colombo. Over the last few days, there have been various discussions and telephone calls between the SLFP seat organizers in this regard, where many have mentioned that strict action should be taken against this. Also, as seat organizers, are of the opinion that they should organize an organized protest against these arbitrary activities of the party leadership.
In general, if we take the history of Sri Lankan Party, there was a culture of serious conflicts between the party leaders from the past. Slamming, scolding, booing, overturning chairs, going to court etc. within the party are events that have been part of SLFP culture since then. In some cases, there were many cases of rebellion against the party leaders in this culture. Accordingly, it has been seen that there has been a strong doubt among the party’s high-ranking leaders that there will be a serious division within the party based on that culture at this year’s party convention.
