by Dasun Edirisinghe

Minister of Higher Education and former SLFP General Secretary S. B. Dissanayake said yesterday that he had once comfortably beaten Maithripala Sirisena to become the SLFP General Secretary at an intra party election.

“I won hands down and how can Sirisena defeat a popular President like Mahinda Rajapaksa,” said Minister Dissanayake, who described his former cabinet colleague as a weakling. “He had to wait till I left to become the party General Secretary.”

Dissanayake said that all candidates who had been in power before standing for President such as J. R. Jayewardene, R. Premadasa, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sarath Fonseka had flaunted their achievements to prove their capabilities, but Sirisena had presented a long list of what he had failed to achieve as his qualifications.

“He tells the people that he failed to have pictorial warning printed on cigarette packets the way he wanted. He also says the National Drug Policy could not be implemented. He laments that he could not have harmful agro chemicals banned though there is a high incidents of the chronic kidney disease in the North Central Province.

Minister Dissanayake said that in short, he (Sirisena) admitted he was a failed politician.

“Will anyone in his or her right mind vote for a failure when they have a very successful, patriotic and capable candidate in the person of Mahinda Rajapaksa?”

Minister Dissanayake said Sirisena, who was promising good governance, was in the exalted company of Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was accused of his involvement in the Batalanda Torture Chamber and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who had notorious killer Beddagane Sanjeeva as one of her bodyguards.

Wickremesinghe had also shielded a notorious killer and rapist called Gonawela Sunil, Dissanayake said. “Chandrika appointed Sanjeeva a police officer and promoted him. Wickremesinghe had Gonawela Sunil appointed a Justice of the Peace.”

Dissanayake asked whether people would take seriously promises made by Sirisena surrounded by the likes of Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga.

Of the Rajapaksa brothers, only Gotabhaya had been brought in by the president as a public official. Others had entered politics a long time before when Mahinda Rajapaksa was not even a decision maker in the SLFP, Dissanayake said, adding that all of them had rendered yeoman service to the country but Sirisena’s brothers were real pests.

One of Sirisena’s siblings had abused political power to control the paddy market. Two others had been engaged in illegal sand mining and rock blasting. Another brother had grabbed a hotel in the Parakrama Samudra reservation and annexed a land to it by using political power. Sirisena had, as Minister of Mahaweli, handed over a government seed farm to another brother, the minister said.

Sirisena’s brother Dudley had not possessed even a bicycle in 1990, but he had become a billionaire thank to his brother’s political power, Dissanayake alleged.

Courtesy:The Island