Crisis brews within SLPP over presidential candidate

One notable aspect at Monday’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) May Day rally was the welcome given to the party’s National Organiser Basil Rajapaksa.

In the days following the rally, some SLPP MPs have come out and told the media that Basil Rajapaksa would be the SLPP’s candidate at the next presidential election. Others have cautioned it was too early to make such predictions.

At the SLPP head office, Parliamentarian Prof. Ranjith Bandara told journalists that while former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was the party’s “spiritual leader,” Basil Rajapaksa would be its candidate at the presidential election. SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam, however, was more vague, saying that Basil Rajapaksa “could be” the presidential candidate but that it would be a party decision.

Anuradhapura District Parliamentarian S.M. Chandrasena also told reporters that given the fact that the election was more than one and a half years away, the SLPP would make a decision on its candidate at the correct time.

Some SLPP MPs had earlier come out with statements citing President Ranil Wickremesinghe as a common candidate supported by the SLPP at the next presidential election.

It is no secret that the SLPP now has two factions, one supporting President Wickremesinghe and the other Basil Rajapaksa.

Opposition MP and Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) leader Udaya Gammanpila, meanwhile, claimed President Wickremesinghe was exploring ways of contesting the next presidential election by jettisoning the Rajapaksas and their loyalists. “The biggest obstacle standing in his way right now is the presence of the deeply unpopular Rajapaksas in his group. Basil Rajapaksa’s group has been requesting ministerial positions from him for a while now, but the President has so far resisted these calls,” he told the media.