The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) will formally invite Gen. Sarath Fonseka to contest the upcoming Presidential Election.
The United National Front (UNF), whose constituent parties have already reached consensus on his candidature, as exclusively revealed in the Sunday Times last week, will thereafter publicly welcome the move. They will announce that the UNF will extend their full support, according to inter-party consultations now under way.
SLFP (Mahajana Wing) leader Mangala Samarweera is continuing talks with JVP Parliamentary group leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake in this regard. Another initiative to rope in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is being spearheaded on behalf of the UNF by Sri Lanka Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakeem. He is talking to TNA leader R. Sampanthan, who later told the Sunday Times the TNA had not yet taken a decision.
The move to formally nominate Gen. Fonseka as the “common candidate” of opposition parties is to materialize sooner than expected in view of two reasons. First is the acceptance of Gen. Fonseka’s retirement with effect from last Friday. The other is a proclamation next week by President Mahinda Rajapaksa declaring a Presidential election. An auspicious hour to issue a Gazette notification late next week is now being looked at.
Soon after the Government announced that Gen. Fonseka’s retirement offer would be accepted from Friday, his security has been pruned down. He has been assigned only a platoon of troops -- an officer and 34 soldiers -- for his security. Besides a bulletproof BMW, he has also been given only two Jeeps as escort vehicles. He has also been asked to vacate his official bungalow inside Army Headquarters.
President Rajapaksa on Friday evening told a National Freedom Front (NFF) delegation headed by its leader Wimal Weerawansa that Presidential Elections would come first. The remarks came during a meeting that continued till early yesterday. The NFF members had declared that they would endorse this decision. Thereafter, the formulation of a programme of action for the polls where NFF would co-operate with others in the UPFA was discussed.
On Friday morning, President Rajapaksa entertained Colombo-based envoys of the European Union for breakfast at the President’s House in Kandy. Later, he invited them to ask whatever questions they wished.
One of them raised the issue of media reports that President Rajapaksa would announce to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) annual Convention today which polls, the Presidential or Parliamentary Election, would come first. President Rajapaksa laughed and declared he had no such plans. He said he might ask party delegates attending from all parts of Sri Lanka which polls they would prefer first.
Another EU envoy had asked why Myanmar’s military dictator Senior General Than Shwe was invited to visit Sri Lanka. President Rajapaksa had explained that Sri Lanka and Myanmar had sixty years of diplomatic relations. He had been invited to Myanmar early this year and Gen. Shwe’s visit was a reciprocal one.
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