Harin challenges Shasheendra to debate

Tuesday, 2 September 2014 02:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Offers to debate UPFA rival on any network, even in Moneragala stronghold
Plays down meeting with Namal Rajapaksa on campaign trail
“No one criticises Rajapaksa regime more”: UNP CM candidate
Warns that violence is escalating in Badulla District

By Dharisha Bastians UNP Chief Ministerial hopeful in the Uva Province Harin Fernando challenged his main rival Shasheendra Rajapaksa to a public debate yesterday, while playing down his recently-publicised interaction with another member of the Rajapaksa family. “I am willing to debate him on any television network and I will come wherever he wants me to. If he is too busy campaigning to come to Colombo, I will go to him in Moneragala,” Harin Fernando told journalists at Sirikotha.

“He might travel by helicopter and we might travel by road, but I will still go to him if he is willing to face a debate,” the UNP candidate charged. Fernando scoffed at the former Uva Chief Minister’s claims that poverty rates in the province had declined since he took office in 2009. “Shasheendra Rajapaksa’s measure of this is the fact that every person owns a mobile telephone. But his own Government’s statistics say poverty rates in Uva have increased,” Fernando told a press briefing. He said the Shasheendra Rajapaksa provincial administration in Uva had been unable to create a single job in the region for five years. Fernando, who had stepped off the campaign trail and travelled to Colombo yesterday for press interactions and meetings in Colombo, charged that attempts to overplay his recent meeting with Namal Rajapaksa was a contract being carried out by vested interests.

Sajith reappointment: Working Committee will decide, says Karu

With speculation rife that UNP Hambantota District MP Sajith Premadasa would be reappointed to the position of deputy leader in the next few days, party front-liners insisted a decision had not yet been made.

“The deputy leadership is decided by the UNP Working Committee and the Working Committee is yet to even discuss the issue,” UNP Leadership Council Chairman Karu Jayasuriya told a press briefing at Sirikotha yesterday. UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake however told the media that a series of appointments was due to be made in the party over the next few days. Premadasa has laid down several conditions along with the demand for his reinstatement, authoritative sources told the Daily FT. In addition to being the only deputy leader of the UNP, Premadasa has also demanded that the UNP Leadership Council established by the Working Committee late last year be dissolved, the sources said. The UNP leadership was seriously mulling the reappointment, but Premadasa’s absence in the UNP’s Moneragala campaign, where the party is up against the might of the UPFA resources, was concerning senior party members, the sources added.

“If I wanted to make secret deals with Namal, there are plenty of other ways to do so. I don’t need to do it publicly,” he charged. The UNP candidate said MP Rajapaksa had asked him for tea when they passed each other on the campaign trail in Paranagama. Fernando told the Daily FT he had raised the issue of using State resources for campaign purposes during the meeting. Repeatedly grilled about his meeting with MP Rajapaksa at the press briefing, with some sections of the media speculating that the UNP candidate was getting set to join the Government at a later date, Fernando said the claims were completely baseless. “If I wanted to join the Government, all I had to do was to take three steps across the aisle in Parliament. Instead I resigned from Parliament and entered the fray in Uva. Why did I need to go through all that trouble?” he charged. The young UNP politician said he hoped that he had set a small example for his party men by his decision to resign his Parliament seat and contest a provincial poll. Ensuring the party’s victory should be everyone’s goal, Fernando asserted. “Titles don’t matter,” he remarked, even as the UNP is seized with negotiations over appointing Sajith Premadasa as deputy leader. Asked if Premadasa had appeared on the Uva campaign trail to support UNP candidates, Fernando said he hoped to see Ranil Wickremesinghe, Karu Jayasuriya and Premadasa at major rallies in the next 20 days. “All three love the party I think. If any person is less of a party loyalist, then that person will be exposed as the Uva campaign wears on,” he noted. UNP seniors have complained that Premadasa had absented himself from UNP campaigns in the Uva Province, even in the hotly-contested Moneragala District, where he had promised to support UNP MP Ranjith Maddumabandara. Fernando said that while Moneragala had seen the worst election violence of the campaign so far, tensions were also escalating in the Badulla region.