{"id":92322,"date":"2019-08-18T13:19:51","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T20:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92322"},"modified":"2019-08-18T13:19:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T20:19:51","slug":"ranil-still-wields-unp-might-sajith-could-contest-from-arunas-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/18\/ranil-still-wields-unp-might-sajith-could-contest-from-arunas-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil still wields UNP might : Sajith could contest from Aruna&#8217;s party?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy srilankamirror.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>UNP deputy leader &#8211; Sajith Premadasa has been informed through close associates that Ranil Wickremesinghe will not give the party candidacy to him, reports say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A news report by the &#8216;Aruna&#8217; newspaper states that if Mr. Premadasa wishs to contest the presidential election regardless as a separate candidate, he has the opportunity to do so by choosing Aruna de Soyza&#8217;s Democratic&nbsp;<br>National Movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Preference for Karu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the UNP leader is quite fine about passing the candidacy to Karu Jayasuriya, reports say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, the state-owned &#8216;Silumina&#8217; newspaper reports that a group of prominent UNP figures and party seniors have urged Karu Jayasuriya to take initiative to gather all parties to assure a UNP victory at the upcoming presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although there should be 96 members at the UNP Working Committee, the figure currently stands at 65 and also includes members of the 75-man strong parliamentary group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the total of the UNP WC and the parliamentary group stand at 120.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From this figure, around 45 are of the opinion that Ranil Wickremesinghe should be named party candidate. Thirty-eight of these 45 members directly back Mr. Wickremesinghe while 07 others are in an in-between state, reports <br>add.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Sajith is only backed by 27 members with 22 of them offering direct support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is also noted that even though the 07 members who are in an in-between state will turn towards him, Sajith will still have just the support of 30 members in total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy srilankamirror.com UNP deputy leader &#8211; Sajith Premadasa has been informed through close associates that Ranil Wickremesinghe will not give the party candidacy to him, reports say. A news report by the &#8216;Aruna&#8217; newspaper states that if Mr. Premadasa wishs to contest the presidential election regardless as a separate candidate, he has the opportunity to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92322","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=92322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}