UPFA minority parties says UNP’s national government move is a political gimmick
Thursday, 26 February 2015 01:17
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By Jayashika Padmasiri
Prominent minority parties of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) yesterday labelled the planned national government moves by the UNP as a “political gimmick” and expressed concern over its motives.
“We would like to express our dismay at the Government’s political hunt. This hunt is obvious by the fact that by using the police, the Government is not granting bail to people who could be granted bail. So this is the second operation of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to attack the masses who are gathering against the UNP,” UPFA MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara told a media briefing.
Apart from Nanayakkara, MP Dinesh Gunawardena, Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) Leader Udaya Gammanpila and Mohamed Muzammil were also present at the event.
Speaking about their efforts to bring forward former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the UPFA prime ministerial candidate, the minority parties of the UPFA said that their only intention was to take the UPFA towards victory again and not to create a split within the party.
They also stated that although they were minority parties of the UPFA the SLFP must understand that although a plate of rice may contain 80% of rice on it, that rice is uneatable without the small curries around it.
Gammanpila said that the Government was bringing forward the concept of a national government to weaken the main Opposition and strengthen separatism in the country while also calling the idea to form a national government an ‘ice bucket’ thrown at the people when the people are elated by the hope of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa coming back to politics.
“The people are waiting to send this violent and dangerous Government back home through a general election because this Government robbed the votes of the public with lies and stories of corruption. The biggest stories of corruption this Government has been able to prove are Sashi Weerawansa’s case with her birthday and Tissa Attanayake’s forged signature case. They have not been able to prove anything else. So we ask them, are these the biggest corruption cases that happened during President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime? Anyway the people are waiting till the Government is dissolved on 23 April to send them home. So we request this Government not to rob them of that opportunity,” Gammanpila added.
Commenting about the arrest of their political colleague UPFA MP Wimal Weerawansa’s wife, Gammanpila said that they were proud of the fact that Sashi Weerawansa possessed a passport which is worth more than Rs. 5,000,000 as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) can only investigate cases dealing with sums of money exceeding that amount.
The minority parties, who organised the Nugegoda rally, also compared the number of people who attended the event to the crowd which gathered at Galle Face to see Pope Francis when he visited Sri Lanka recently.
