News

News

Thondaman to back Ranil
The Ceylon Workers Congress, the largest plantation sector trade union and political party, is to support United National Party candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe at the upcoming presidential elections.A formal announcement is to be made in this regard next week by its leader Arumugam Thondaman.
The move follows a breakdown in the latest round of talks between Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and CWC leader Arumugam Thondaman.

A Prime Ministerial source told The Sunday Times Mr. Rajapakse had rejected two of the many conditions put forward by the CWC. One is said to relate to financial issues and the other the insistence that the Premier should only deal exclusively with the CWC when it came to the plantation sector. CWC officials declined comment on the issue but said their official position would be made public soon.

According to the Prime Ministerial source, during early rounds of contacts between Mr. Rajapakse and Mr. Thondaman, the CWC leader had made available a list of demands. This list had not included the demand that the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS) should be implemented by the winning candidate at the presidential elections.
The source said the demand had been added to a later list whilst Mr. Thondaman was away in the United States accompanying President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to the United Nations.

Last week Mr. Thondaman held a series of talks. At first he met Premier Rajapakse in the company of Minister Mangala Samaraweera. Thereafter he met Opposition leader and UNP candidate Wickremesinghe and followed it up with a meeting later with President Kumaratunga.

At this meeting Ms. Kumaratunga is learnt to have told Mr. Thondaman to hold back a decision of his party until she resolved the issue of P-TOMS with her party candidate, Mr. Rajapakse.

The CWC is known to have a vote base of 900,000 in the districts of Nuwara Eliya, Kandy, Matale, Ratnapura and Badulla. At the 2004 parliamentary general elections, the CWC returned eight MPs to Parliament. It also polled considerably in the Western province.
(See comments by our Political Editor.)

Top

Back to News