TISSA ATTANAYAKA WARNS THAT THEY WILL HAVE TO RECONSIDER MOU WITH THE GOVERNMENT IF 21 UNP PARLIAMENTARIANS JOIN THE GOVERNMENT

By Walter Jayawardhana

The protégé of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and General Secretary of the party has warned that they would have to reconsider the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the UNP and the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party if a team of UNP stalwarts join the government as cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and project ministers.

But the cabinet spokesman Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said the MoU between the two parties has no relevance if some UNP stalwarts decided to join the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and it was wrong to curtail the right of the UNP parliamentarians to make their political choices.

The issue of not allowing the UNP parliamentarians to join the government was raised at the time of signing the MoU but President Rajapaksa, at that time refused to include the curtailment of UNP parliamentarians from joining the government as a condition of the MoU, government insiders said. Such curtailment also does not appear as an explicit condition of the agreement in any published copy of the memorandum of understanding.

Tissa Attanayaka told the BBC’s Sinhala Service Sandeshaya that he was only hearing and reading media reports about some UNP stalwarts trying to join the government and said he did not know whether the reports were true or not indicating he was still in the dark.

But media reports said that the biggest exodus of UNP parliamentarians in the history including the party’s deputy leader, consisting about 21 UNP parliamentarians and their entry to the government at any time from now resulting in a historical cabinet reshuffle is in the offing. According to the same speculations the rebels could get 5 cabinet positions and about 15 positions of deputy ministers and project ministers.

Tissa Attanayaka , who was hand picked by the party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to be UNP’s General Secretary , lamented that it was wrong for the UNP parliamentarians to join the government and it was against the party discipline.

But in the cases of earlier cross over from the UNP like that of Keheliya Rambukwella, it was found that the party was helpless to do anything against the political infidelity since the Supreme Court has rejected the notion to expel from the parliament those who joined the government from the opposition.

Attanayaka has been fighting for years to stop his leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe fading into political oblivion despite 14 electoral defeats of the party under his leadership, which is widely accepted as aloof and surrounded only by the Cinnamon Gardens elite of Colombo. Lacking any internal party democracy , a reformist group, led by the party’s deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya, former cabinet minister and rural leader R. M. Dharmadasa Banda and party intellectual G.L. Peiris have been fighting to install one in the party unsuccessfully.

Despite the clamor of the reformist group Ranil Wickremesinghe has appointed himself the party leader and his protégé Tissa Attanayaka the General Secretary rejecting proposals that party officials be elected at delegate conventions of the party democratically. The present crisis in the UNP is considered to be the biggest one in its more than half a century old history since the party was formed to gain independence by the country’s first Prime Minister D. S. Senanayaka to periods it has been ruling the country in turns and during times it has been leading the opposition until Ranil Wickremesinghe, an uncharismatic nephew of a former leader was pushed in to the office of leadership, obviously as an act of nepotism without any popular support.

While protégés like Attanayaka were appointed to the party offices, as a penalty for proposing party reforms Karu Jayasuriya, lost not only his deputy leadership of the party but also the electoral organizer ship he held, that enables him to contest future parliamentary elections on party ticket to unknown favorites and handpicks of the party leader, despite the fact that he was the Prime Ministerial candidate of the party at the last general election.

Other party rebels and seniors, sometimes more senior than the party leader himself, Dharmadasa Banda, Imithiyas Bakeer Marker, Wijepala Mendis and M.H. Mohammed were also not given any party positions. Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe while promising party reforms was doing away with the reformists. That provided opportunities for President Rajapaksa to gain them. From the President’s side he is trying to compensate the support in the parliament he might eventually lose from the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, on some vital issues. With the UNP group the President was also considering the recruitment of the largest Muslim Party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the party of the Buddhist monks, the Jathika Hela Urumaya into the government rank.