Polls group getting millions for spreading lies and damn lies
UNP parliamentarians have not been told to remain in the country and refrain from travel abroad. The UNP has not started any negotiations with pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa MPs who are in the opposition side.
Some western Governments are getting their money’s worth from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), including local polls monitoring bodies, after doling out millions of their dollars to spread good governance and preach democratic values.
However, not all what they receive through their diplomatic missions in Colombo is the truth and nothing but the truth. Periodic e-mails circulated among these missions, perhaps to keep their dollars flowing, are so well hand crafted that they appear realistic. They are not even closer to the truth.
Here is one such e-mail a prominent polls monitoring body circulated under the headline “PM INSISTS ON CHARITHA RATWATTE – WILL THE UNP LEAVE UNITY GOVERNMENT?”
This is what their story says: The crisis in appointing a new governor to the central bank has culminated to the point where the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe is pondering taking his party out of the unity government.
After President Maithripala Sirisena rejected Wickremesinghe's request to appoint his right hand man, Charitha Ratwatte, the UNP leadership has advised all its MPs not to leave the country in the coming days as the party is attempting to form a government on its own. We have learnt that the UNP leadership has commenced negotiations with some Joint Opposition MPs (UNP has 105 MPs and they can form a government with another poached 8 MPs).
Former CB Governor Arjun Mahendran has also called the UNP MPs and asked them to remain in Colombo. The UNP MPs have been told that former president Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to provide the necessary number of MPs for the UNP to form a government and a new government, led by Wickremesinghe, will be formed in the next three days.
Today (Friday) Wickremesinghe and Malik Samarawickrama will meet President Sirisena and stress that Ratwatte must be appointed the CB Governor. If the President does not agree, the UNP will leave the government, the UNP MPs were told yesterday (Thursday).”
UNP parliamentarians have not been told to remain in the country and refrain from travel abroad. The UNP has not started any negotiations with pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa MPs who are in the opposition side. Premier Wickremesinghe and Minister Malik Samarawickreme met President Sirisena for talks on Samarawickreme recent visit to Beijing.
PrIme Minister Wickremesinghe scoffed at this note to diplomatic missions. “We would have to write to the same missions to tell them not to believe their lies and pay more money to spread false stories,” he told the Sunday Times.
It’s a case of the foreign governments funding and building local groups to feed them with lies, lot of damn lies.
As the recent Wikileaks documents show, some similar assertions, perceived to be true, were reported back from Colombo to the State Department in Washington DC. As the reveleations showed, they were bunkum.