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Thursday, 25 July 2013 01:44 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
yesterday quit his seat with a scathing critique of the UNP leadership and rejoined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, pledging to support President Mahinda Rajapaksa at a future presidential election.
Jayasekera said he will contest for Chief Ministerial office at the forthcoming North Western Provincial Council election.
Referring to the United National Party as “a rotten banana tree” that had no future under the leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who he called “a dictator and a psychopath”, Jayasekera vowed to pull off a good showing at the Wayamba election on behalf of the ruling coalition.
Jayasekera claimed that on principle, he had decided to decline the ministerial office offered to him by President Rajapaksa because it was UNP voters that elected him to parliamentary office. Saying that he was joining the Government not as a disappointed person but as a victorious person, Jayasekera claimed, “My leader is Mahinda Rajapaksa”.
“There is a right that people hold on to steadfastly. It is none other than the right to think. Losing such a right will usher in a miserable time for mankind. I am making this statement as a result of the frightening situation created within the UNP, where instead of the right to think, we are forced to follow blindly,” the rebel MP said.
Likening Wickremesinghe’s leadership to the interpretation on conservatism by former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Jayasekera said that those who rise against him will face the guillotine. He said that most members in the Government are those who faced this guillotine and left the party.
“He became the Party Leader in 1994 and during a convention held in Kataragama in 1995, he amended Article 8.1 of the UNP constitution. This amendment established that the Party leadership shall not be changed until the position gets vacant by a death or unless he tenders a resignation. This was the start of the obstacles that hindered the development of the UNP.
Many have struggled to change this but ultimately left the party, having failed miserably.
“After much deliberation, we changed this at a recent convention of the UNP. He appointed 23 persons to the Executive Committee of the UNP who had no knowledge about the party or the issues within the party. During the vote, he won and we lost. He prepared 92 ballot papers with serial numbers to later identify the members voted against him. This is the crisis within our party and he managed to extend the leadership for another six years as decided by a committee headed by Srinath Perera. Many of us had the guts to stand against this. He will continue to be the party leader till 2018 and probably get another extension if the same officials are found in the UNP Executive Committee. Now the UNP has the dream of taking power in 2022,” he said.
He named MPs Karu Jayasuriya, Sajith Premadasa, Ranjith Maddumabandara, Thalatha Athukorala, Rosy Senanayake, Buddhika Pathirana, Sujeewa Senasinghe, Dunesh Gankanda, Palitha Thewarapperuma, Ashoka Abeysinghe, Imithias Bakeer Markar, Ranjith Aluvihare and Palitha Rangebandara as some of those who had faced what he called the viciousness of the party leader.
“This is more like the great cleansing of the Communist Party by Joseph Stalin. Dr. Sarath Amunugama left the UNP with several others and Karu Jayasuriya left with 17 others by joining the Government. Those who were very close to Wickremesinghe such as Keheliya Rambukwella, Rohitha Bogollagama and Mahinda Samarasinghe also left him,” Jayasekera charged.
In a continuous criticism of Wickremesinghe’s leadership, Jayasekera said that the UNP Leader had done nothing to secure the release of the party’s one time National Organiser S.B. Dissanayake who had worked so hard for the party, or for the release of General Sarath Fonseka who the UNP backed at the last presidential election.
“Even today, I reject the method used to remove Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. The Government couldn’t have proceeded with it if we had our act together. What he had planned was how to remove the UNP members in the Government by using the next CJ. We had over 72,000 trade union members in 1994. This has gone down to 7,000. We no longer can organise an independent trade union action but hand it over to another political party for a joint effort. He is the leader of the voice-cut politics. The UNP will lose the forthcoming provincial council election and all other elections thereafter,” he added, pledging to support the Sri Lanka Freedom Party at future polls.
