Noting that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has decided to contest alone in the upcoming Local Government (LG) election in almost all LG bodies of several districts, the party’s Senior Vice President (VP) Prof. Rohana Luxman Piyadasa said that the SLFP is to consider themselves as only a nominal constituent party of the recently formed Nidahas Janatha Sandanaya (Freedom People’s Alliance), which is to contest under the official symbol of a helicopter.
Speaking to The Morning, he said: “The alliance was formed and there are district leaders, but none of those politicians are welcomed by the people now. Most of them are members of one-member political parties, which previously worked with the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). However, the SLFP has about 1,000 LG members and councillors, and we have electoral organisers too. What the other parties in the alliance are trying to do is to make their way through it. They ask for a bigger quota in the LG election. If we allow that, we will have no place.”
With regard to the matter, he said that the SLFP politburo had met to discuss the upcoming LG election on 15 January where it was decided that the SLFP should contest the election independently, with the hand as the symbol. Accordingly, he said that SLFP candidates in more than 19 districts will contest the said election under the symbol of the hand, while the candidates for a few LG bodies in districts such as Ampara, Colombo, Puttalam, and Nuwara Eliya will contest as part of the alliance in question.
When queried regarding the current status of the said alliance, Prof. Piyadasa said: “It has become paralysed now. When we are in an alliance, we should negotiate matters and work together, but that is not what happened there. Most of its members look out for their own benefit. The other thing is that we feel that alliance-based politics is also over now because regardless of what alliances are formed, the people know who its members are and where they come from. It was they who spoke about Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s former Premier Mahathir Mohamed when former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was contesting for the Presidential election.”
The SLFP aligned with several other parties, including the Freedom People’s Congress and the Supreme Lanka Coalition, to contest the upcoming LG election under the name of the Freedom People’s Alliance with the helicopter as their official symbol. Accordingly, members of the SLFP, led by party Chairman and Opposition MP Maithripala Sirisena, the Freedom People’s Congress, led by Opposition MP Dullas Alahapperuma, the Supreme Lanka Coalition, led by Opposition MP Wimal Weerawansa, and a group of Opposition MPs led by Anura Priyadarshana Yapa formed this alliance at an event held at the SLFP headquarters in Colombo on 11 January.
However, sources within the alliance told The Morning that following the announcement of the Supreme Court decision regarding former President and Defence Minister Sirisena and several others in connection with the Easter Sunday terror attacks of 2019, a group of Opposition MPs representing the constituent parties of the said alliance, including Alahapperuma, had met with Sirisena on 12 January and informed the latter to step down as the SLFP Chairman in order to continue with the alliance.