Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) will field parliamentarian Mujibur Rahman as its mayoral candidate for Colombo. 

The decision was made at the party working committee meeting on Saturday and announced by the Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa.  Mujibur will now resign from his seat in Parliament and run for the post of mayor at the upcoming Local Government elections scheduled to take place in March.

Former Minister and MP A.H.M. Fowzie is expected to take his seat in Parliament after he received the highest preferential votes in Colombo after MP Hirunika Premachandra. 

Rahman entered politics in 1991 by forming the Muslim Progressive Front (MPF) and worked alongside the Lalith Athulathmudali-Gamini Dissanayake faction of the United National Party (UNP). In 1994, he joined the Nava Sama Samaja Party going on to form the Muslim United Liberation Front in 1996. After several years abroad, Rahman returned to Sri Lanka in 2005 and joined the UNP. Though Rahman attempted to contest the local council elections in 2006, he lost the opportunity as the UNP nominations list was rejected. 

He entered the Western Provincial Council in 2009 and 2014, serving for six years before being elected to Parliament for the first time in 2015. He joined UNP breakaway group SJB and entered Parliament as an SJB MP in 2020.

SLPP to allow coalition partner UNP to decide Colombo mayoral candidate