{"id":65512,"date":"2019-09-07T15:51:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T19:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=65512"},"modified":"2019-09-07T16:00:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T20:00:14","slug":"move-by-malik-samarawickrema-to-bring-about-unity-in-unp-faces-jeopardy-as-sajith-premadasa-does-not-want-to-attend-9-am-meeting-with-ranil-wickremesinghe-at-temple-trees-on-sunday-sep-8th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=65512","title":{"rendered":"Move by Malik Samarawickrema to  Bring About Unity in UNP Faces Jeopardy as Sajith Premadasa  Does not Want To Attend 9 am  Meeting With  Ranil Wickremesinghe at &#8220;Temple Trees&#8221; on Sunday Sep 8th"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By The &#8220;Sunday Times&#8221;  Political Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This week\u2019s two major political developments over the presidential election took Sri Lankans by surprise and portend a major change in alignments.<\/p>\n<p>One is the declaration by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he would be the United National Party (UNP) candidate. On Friday he told a meeting of party leaders he would obtain approval from the Working Committee, the main policy-making body, and launch his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Malik Samarawickrema, Onetime close confidante of Mr Wickremesinghe and now a key backer of Sajith Premadasa, appealed for the two leaders to meet. Though it has been set for 9 a.m. today at Temple Trees, the Sunday Times has learnt Mr Premadasa will not attend the one-on-one talks raising wide speculation over his as well as the political future of his backers.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The other is a new set of demands by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party<br \/>\n(SLFP) from their more powerful offshoot, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). This has cast serious doubts over their proposed partnership for which a deal was wrapped up.<\/p>\n<p>Both President Sirisena and SLPP leader Mahinda Rajapaksa reached informal accord, but the SLFP is now insisting that the opposition presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa contest under the Chair symbol \u2013 a demand which the SLPP is not willing to heed on the grounds that its original symbol the pohottuwa had become its brand name.<\/p>\n<p>Other demands include an SLPP commitment in advance over the quota of SLFP candidates during a parliamentary election. The SLPP is describing the demands as being aimed at forcing it to withdraw from the arrangement and placing the blame on it.<\/p>\n<p>The new demands, endorsed by President Sirisena have been conveyed to the SLPP during the last round of talks last Friday.<\/p>\n<p>These developments come as President Sirisena declared at the 68th annual convention of the SLFP that it was not the presidency but the prime ministerial position that would become important.<\/p>\n<p><em>Courtesy:Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"tweetbutton65512\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdbsjeyaraj.com%2Fdbsj%2F%3Fp%3D65512&amp;text=Move%20by%20Malik%20Samarawickrema%20to%20%20Bring%20About%20Unity%20in%20UNP%20Faces%20Jeopardy%20as%20Sajith%20Premadasa%20%20Does%20not%20Want%20To...%20&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By The &#8220;Sunday Times&#8221; Political Editor This week\u2019s two major political developments over the presidential election took Sri Lankans by surprise and portend a major change in alignments. One is the declaration by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he would be the United National Party (UNP) candidate. On Friday he told a meeting of party &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=65512\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Move by Malik Samarawickrema to  Bring About Unity in UNP Faces Jeopardy as Sajith Premadasa  Does not Want To Attend 9 am  Meeting With  Ranil Wickremesinghe at &#8220;Temple Trees&#8221; on Sunday Sep 8th&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65513,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65512\/revisions\/65513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}