{"id":44818,"date":"2015-06-20T09:40:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T15:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=44818"},"modified":"2015-06-20T02:17:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T09:17:33","slug":"next-general-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/06\/20\/next-general-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Next General Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orpheus Perera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Rajitha Senaratne, as a spokesperson for government (or UNP?), made the following statement at the press conference:<\/p>\n

The six-member committee has also discussed this matter with the President last evening. President Maithripala Sirisena will never field Rajapaksa as the prime ministerial candidate. There will be no chance for him to enter parliament through the National List as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said in Sinhala: President Sirisena\u00a0 innay ai Stawaraye.\u201d It sounds like President Sirisena is no longer the humble guy. But many times in the past he has said Mahinda Rajapakse was like a dictator –\u00a0\u00a0 never listening to others at the party meetings and making his own decisions. Whom is Sirisena listening to now? He is telling the party members that there is no way for Mahinda to come to the parliament through the party. It is obvious that the decision he has taken (as explained by Rajitha) is the instructions given to him by Ranil Wickramasinge.<\/p>\n

It is obvious from the amount of people gathering around Mahinda that there is massive support for him, and a big demand from SLFP supporters and voters that Mahinda continue to represent them.<\/p>\n

Ranil Wikramasinhe and his allies have done their homework, and Mahinda Rajapakse and UPFA members have not done theirs. If you do not do your homework and assignments, you are bound to fail the exam.<\/p>\n

Before the Presidential election, Ranil, together with his western allies, did their homework and acted upon their findings. They knew that with the new freedom of vote for Jaffna and the North Easterners, that they would not favor Mahinda Rajapakse or SLFP. Although Maithripala Sirisena was an SLFP, he was fully backed by UNP. In any case, many new voters in the new areas show SLFP as their enemy. Muslim minority MP\u2019s who formed UPAF were a weak link, and they also did their homework. In any case, the majority of them were UNP supporters. Although there were huge gatherings at Mahinda\u2019s election meetings, they knew Mahinda had less chance of winning, especially because it was his third attempt. TNA felt that they could get something that LTTE could not get from JRJ, CBK or MR. At the same time Astrologer encouraged Mahinda to go for an election two years early, before building up the bridge with the Tamil population in the North (some believe that Ranil has manipulated the Astrologer). In the South, Sirisena got all the hardcore UNP votes. The West and India wanted to stop China from using Colombo for their trading with Africa, and thereby becoming the power of the Indian Ocean. They also saw Mahinda as their enemy.<\/p>\n

That was history. Now for the next Parliamentary election. There are only two options to \u00a0keeping Ranil out. The first way being President Sirisena\u2019s respect of the opinion of the majority party members, and allowing Mahinda to come back to the parliament by winning his seat under SLFP flag or by appointment. The second possibility is for Mahinda \u00a0contest as an independent candidate from Hambanthota area, but support \u00a0all other \u00a0UPFA candidates, attending\u00a0 their meetings(except people like Rajitha). There is no other way other than the above two possibilities. Alternately, (if there is any possibility) remove Sirisena \u00a0from SLFP leadership, with enough time left for the election.<\/p>\n

What we can see from the current random opinions of voters is that many SLFP voters will not vote anybody other than Mahinda. If Mahinda forms a new party and contest, he will be splitting the SLFP votes. Sirisena will not give a damn about it. In fact, he will be happy, without any question he can keep his promise to Ranil and keep him as the Prime minister. Even if Ranil is removed by a no-confidence vote, that will only be temporary because they all have to go for an election soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Orpheus Perera Rajitha Senaratne, as a spokesperson for government (or UNP?), made the following statement at the press conference: The six-member committee has also discussed this matter with the President last evening. President Maithripala Sirisena will never field Rajapaksa as the prime ministerial candidate. There will be no chance for him to enter parliament through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orpheus-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}