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May Day: Further divisions emerge within political parties, new alliances, while some lawmakers stay at home
By Shamindra Ferdinando
In spite of determined UNP’s efforts, it couldn’t convince SJB MPs to switch their allegiance to President Ranil Wickremesinghe in time for yesterday’s May Day rally, presided over by the green leader at Maligawatte, Colombo, the main Opposition party said.
Gampaha District SJB lawmaker Kavinda Jayawardena told The Island that regardless of the UNP’s repeated appeals, the party was sure none in its parliamentary group would join President Wickremesinghe in the run-up to the presidential poll.
UNP General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara, on several occasions, invited the breakaway SJB group to extend their support to Wickremesinghe, thereby strengthened the party.
The SJB secured 54 seats, including seven National List slots – the second largest group elected at the last parliamentary polls, conducted in August 2020, whereas the UNP was able to scrape just one National List slot.
MP Jayawardena said that as the UNP hadn’t been so far able to propose a tangible plan of action to overcome the continuing economic-political-social crisis, it couldn’t expect political parties to extend their support to the UNP leader.
Two SJB MPs Manusha Nanayakkara and Harin Fernando, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as Premier, joined the government in May 2022, but since he received the presidency in July 2023, no SJB MP switched his or her allegiance to the President.
Earlier in the day, President Wickremesinghe and yet the formidable party among plantation workers, the Ceylon Workers Congress, held a May Day rally at the Kotagala public grounds. The single largest political party, representing the Upcountry Tamils, extended an invitation to President Wickremesinghe as it quit the ruling SLPP. The CWC contested the last parliamentary election on the SLPP ticket. Jeevan Thondaman represents the CWC in Wickremesinghe’s Cabinet.
The EPDP, represented in Cabinet by Jaffna District MP Douglas Devananda, joined the ruling SLPP’s rally at the Campbell Park, while his spokesperson Nelson Edirisinghe told The Island that the party would support President Wickremesinghe at the forthcoming presidential poll. Responding to another query, Edirisinghe said that the EPDP contested the last parliamentary election on the SLPP ticket and won two seats in Jaffna and Vanni.
The ruling SLPP held its rally, sans some of its members, as well as key constituent parties. The SLPP that had won 145 seats, including 17 National List slots, lost nearly 30 MPs since the last general election. Of them, six led by former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris joined the SJB rally held at Chatham Street, Colombo. Other members of Prof. Peiris’s group were Dilan Perera, Dr. Nalaka Godahewa, Wasantha Yapa Bandara, K.P.S. Kumarasiri and Dr. Upul Galappaththy.
The other original members of that group, including Matara District MP Dullas Alahapperuma, hadn’t been able to reach a consensus regarding future course of action, sources said. Therefore, they refrained from either joining any other political party or organizing an event of their own to mark the May Day. That group included Dullas Alahapperuma, Prof. Channa Jayasumana, Charitha Herath, Ratnapala Ratnasekera, Lalith Ellawela and Thilak Rajapaksha.
Patali Champika Ranawaka, who entered Parliament on the SJB ticket, didn’t organize a May Day event, while a senior spokesman said that they were preparing for the convention of the party. Former minister Ranawaka leads the Eksath Janaraja Peramuna that received the Election Commission’s recognition last year. Another elected on the SJB to skip May Day was Kumara Welgama, leader of New Lanka Freedom Party.
Uththara Lanka Sabhagaya (ULS), consisting of another active SLPP rebel group, held its rally at the Lalith Athulathmudali playground, Kirulapone. National Freedom Front (NFF) leader and former Minister Wimal Weerawansa chaired the meeting, in his capacity as the Chairman of the alliance, comprising Communist Party (represented by Dr. G. Weerasinghe and Weerasemana Weerasinghe, MP), Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (MP Udaya Gammanpila), Our Power of People Party (Ven. Atureliye Rathana, MP, in his capacity as the leader of Dharani Jathika Sabhawa) and civil society group Yuthukama (Gevindu Cumaratunga) joined the rally.
The ULS declared in unison at its May Day rally that it was the only grouping genuinely opposed to President Wickremesinghe’s agenda inimical to national interests.
Gampaha District MP Nimal Lana’s ‘New Alliance’, consisting of SLPP MPs, too, kept away from the Campbell Park rally. That group has pledged its support to President Wickremesinghe but decided not to join the rally until the official declaration of Wickremesinghe candidature.
State Minister Lasantha Alagiyawanna said that the majority of the SLFPers, who had been elected on the SLPP ticket, decided to keep away from May Day rallies. This group included the majority of the 14-member SLFP group in Parliament now.
Responding to The Island query, MP Alagiyawanna said that a May Day meeting that had been organized in Gampaha by Maithripala Sirisena faction of the party was meant to boost the image of Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, whose appointment as Acting Chairman of the SLFP didn’t receive the approval of Court.
However, the SLFP rally that was attended by only two MPs – Maithripala Sirisena and Dushmantha Mithrapala -attracted just a fraction of the crowds the party used to attract over the years. Minister Mahinda Amaraweera, another key member of the group opposed to Sirisena’s leadership, was away from the country.
MP Dayasiri Jayasekera said that he didn’t organize any event as a member of the SLFP but addressed a gathering organized by Prabha Ganeshan, a member of a political grouping recently set up by the SLFPer.
The JVP held four rallies, including one in Colombo, whereas two breakaway factions, the NFF and Peratugaami Pakshaya, addressed supporters separately. The NFF is a member of the ULS.
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Sirisena announces WR’s presidential candidature
Amidst continuing turmoil in the SLFP, its suspended Chairman Maithripala Sirisena on May Day announced that Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, would contest the forthcoming presidential election.
Former President Sirisena pledged SLFP’s backing for Rajapakshe’s candidature at the election scheduled to be held later this year at the commemoration ceremony of the late T.B. Ilangaratne in Colombo.
The former President said that Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe has the support of the majority of party members.
“Wijayadasa Rajapakshe will run for the upcoming Presidential election and we will offer him our full support,” he said. The unexpected public announcement was made ahead of the SLFP May Day rally in Gampaha and Sirisena himself was suspension from all internal functions of the party on a court order.
On 17 February, the Indian Navy posted a cheerful message on X.
“Welcome!” it wrote, greeting the Iranian warship Iris Dena as it steamed into the port of Visakhapatnam to join an international naval gathering.
Photographs showed sailors in crisp whites and a grey frigate gliding in the sea harbour on a clear day. The hashtags spoke of “Bridges of Friendship” and “United Through Oceans”.
Two weeks later the ship, carrying 130 sailors, lay at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. It had been torpedoed by a US submarine off Sri Lanka’s southern coast on 4 March.
Commissioned in 2021, the Dena was a relatively new vessel – a Moudge-class frigate of Iran’s Southern Fleet, which patrols the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.
According to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the vessel “thought it was safe in international waters” but instead “died a quiet death”. Rescue teams from Sri Lanka have recovered at least 87 bodies. Only 32 sailors survived.
The sinking marks a dramatic widening of the war between America, Israel and Iran. And, though it occurred in international waters of the Indian Ocean and outside India’s jurisdiction, it is an awkward moment for Delhi.
“The war has come to our doorsteps. That is not a good thing,” says retired Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh.
For some strategists, the episode carries broader implications for India’s regional standing.
Indian strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney wrote on X that the US torpedoing of the Iranian warship in India’s “maritime neighbourhood” was “more than a battlefield episode” – calling it a “strategic embarrassment” for Delhi.
“By sinking a vessel returning from an Indian-hosted multilateral exercise, Washington effectively turned India’s maritime neighbourhood into a war zone, raising uncomfortable questions about India’s authority in its own backyard,” Chellaney wrote.
Just days before its destruction, the Dena had been a diplomatic guest of the Indian Navy.
The ship had travelled to Visakhapatnam, a sun-washed port city on India’s east coast, to participate in the International Fleet Review 2026 and Exercise Milan, a large multilateral naval exercise meant to showcase India’s growing maritime leadership.
Seventy-four countries and 18 warships took part in the events, which Delhi described as a demonstration of its ambition to become the Indian Ocean’s “preferedsecurity partner”.
Visiting ships at such multilateral exercises usually do not carry a full combat load of live munitions, unless scheduled for a live-fire drill, according to Chellaney. Even during the sea phase, when drills and live firing take place, ships carry only tightly controlled ammunition limited to the specific exercises.
Singh, an invitee to the event, recalls seeing the warship and its Iranian sailors in Visakhapatnam just days before its fate changed.
“I saw the boys marching in front of me,” he says of the Iranian naval contingent during the parade along the seafront, just 10m away. “All young people. I feel very sad.”
He says on 21 February, the assembled ships – including the Iranian vessel – sailed out for the sea phase of Exercise Milan, scheduled to run until 25 February.
“What happened next is less clear: the ship may have returned to port or peeled away after exercises. Either way, the waters where it was later sunk – off Galle in Sri Lanka – lie only two to three days’ sailing from India’s east coast,” Singh says. What the ship was doing in the 10-12 days in between is not clear.
Singh, who has commanded submarines, believes the sequence leading up to the attack was probably straightforward.
The US, he notes, tracks vessels across the world’s oceans. “They would have known exactly when the ship left and where it was heading,” he says. A fourth of America’s submarine fleet of 65-70 is at sea at any given time, according to analysts.
According to the Indian Navy, the Iranian warship had been operating about 20 nautical miles west of Galle – roughly 23 miles (37km) – in waters that fall under Sri Lanka’s designated search-and-rescue zone.
The attack, Singh says, appears to have involved a single Mark-48 torpedo, a heavyweight weapon carrying about 650 pounds of high explosive, capable of snapping a ship in two. Video footage suggests the submarine may have fired from 3-4km away, around 05:30 local time.
The aftermath was grim and swift.
The warship reportedly sank within two to three minutes, leaving little time for rescue. “It’s a miracle they managed to send an SOS,” Singh says, which was picked up by the Sri Lanka Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Colombo.
According to the Indian Navy, a distress call from the Iranian warship was picked up by Colombo in the early hours of 4 March, triggering a regional search-and-rescue effort.
The navy said in a statement that Sri Lanka’s navy began rescue operations first, while India moved to assist later.
The Indian Navy deployed a long-range maritime patrol aircraft to support the search and kept another aircraft with air-droppable life rafts on standby.
A naval vessel already operating nearby reached the area by late afternoon. Another ship, which sailed from the southern Indian port city of Kochi to join the effort, continues to comb the waters for survivors and debris.
Under the Second Geneva Convention, countries at war are required to take “all possible measures” to rescue wounded or shipwrecked sailors after a naval attack. In practice, however, this duty applies only if a rescue can be attempted without putting the attacking vessel in serious danger.
Singh says submarines are rarely able to help.
“Submarines don’t surface,” he says. “If you surface and give up your position, someone else can sink you.”
Singh suspects the speed of the sinking – and possibly sparse shipping in the area at the time – meant few nearby vessels could respond. “A ship breaking up that fast leaves almost no chance,” he says.
In a shooting war, Singh says, the legal position is blunt.
Fighting between the United States and Iran had been under way since 28 February, with claims that 17 Iranian naval vessels had already been destroyed.
“When a shooting war is on, any ship of a belligerent country becomes fair game,” he says.
Many questions remain. Why was the Iranian warship still in waters near Sri Lanka nearly two weeks after leaving India’s naval exercise? Was it heading home, or on another mission? And how long had the US submarine been tracking it before firing?
For Delhi, the episode is diplomatically awkward.
India has drawn closer to Washington on defence while maintaining long-standing political and economic ties with Tehran – a balancing act the war has made harder.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called broadly for “dialogue and diplomacy” to resolve conflicts, but has neither addressed the sinking of the Iranian vessel directly nor criticised the American strike.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as “an atrocity at sea” and stressed that the frigate had been “a guest of India’s Navy”. Meanwhile Sri Lanka has taken control of another Iranian naval vessel off its coast after an engine failure forced it to seek port, a day after the US attack.
The episode has nonetheless sparked debate within India’s strategic community.
Kanwal Sibal, a veteran diplomat, argued that India’s responsibility may not be legal, but it is moral.
“The Iranian ship would not have been where it was had India not invited it to the Milan exercise,” he wrote on X. “A word of condolence at the loss of lives of those who were our invitees would be in order.”
Others like Chellaney have framed the issue in more strategic terms.
He described the strike as a blow to India’s maritime diplomacy. The torpedoing of the frigate in “India’s maritime backyard”, he argued, punctured Delhi’s carefully cultivated image as a “preferred security partner” in the Indian Ocean.
“In one torpedo strike, American hard power has punctured India’s carefully cultivated soft power,” says Chellaney.
As the debate gathered pace in strategic circles, India’s official response remained cautious.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on X that he had held a telephone conversation with Araghchi, and also posted a photograph of a meeting with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh at a foreign policy summit in Delhi.
For military historian Srinath Raghavan, the legal position is clear: once the Iranian vessel left India’s shores, Delhi had no formal responsibility.
The strategic message, however, is harder to ignore.
“First, the spreading geography of this war. Second, India’s limited ability to manage its fallout,” says Raghavan.
“Indeed, the US Navy has fired a shot across the bow aimed at all regional players, including India.”
[BBC]
Latest News
Heat Index at ‘Caution Level’ in the Sabaragamuwa province and, Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambanthota and Monaragala districts
Warm Weather Advisory Issued by the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre of the Department of Meteorology at 3.30 p.m. on 06 March 2026, valid for 07 March 2026.
The public are warned that the Heat index, the temperature felt on human body is likely to increase up to ‘Caution level’ at some places in the Sabaragamuwa province and in Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambantota and Monaragala districts.
The Heat Index Forecast is calculated by using relative humidity and maximum temperature and is the condition that is felt on your body. This is not the forecast of maximum temperature. It is generated by the Department of Meteorology for the next day period and prepared by using global numerical weather prediction model data.
Effect of the heat index on human body is mentioned in the above table and it is prepared on the advice of the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medical Services.
ACTION REQUIRED
Job sites: Stay hydrated and takes breaks in the shade as often as possible.
Indoors: Check up on the elderly and the sick.
Vehicles: Never leave children unattended.
Outdoors: Limit strenuous outdoor activities, find shade and stay hydrated.
Dress: Wear lightweight and white or light-colored clothing.
Note: In addition, please refer to advisories issued by the Disaster Preparedness & Response Division, Ministry of Health in this regard as well. For further clarifications please contact 011-7446491
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Prompt solutions will be provided for the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services — PM
Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya stated that the government has paid close attention to the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services and that prompt solutions will be provided following extensive discussions held with trade unions.
The Prime Minister made these remarks while responding to questions raised in Parliament on Friday (06).
Presenting data on existing vacancies in the education sector, the Prime Minister explained the current situation.
There are 903 vacancies existing in the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service (SLEAS) and 3,790 vacancies in Sri Lanka Principals’ Service (SLPS).
In order to fill the vacancies which still remain due to various reasons, including selected officers not accepting appointments after the examinations and interviews conducted since 2021, interviews are scheduled to be held in the second week of March 2026.
Further, in order to fill the vacancies for the years 2021 and 2025, competitive examinations will be conducted in the future with the approval of the Public Service Commission.
At present, entry into the Principals’ Service is considered as a new recruitment. As a solution to the salary-related issue arising in this regard, a new Cabinet paper is being prepared seeking approval to consider appointments to the Principals’ Service as a promotion, thereby enabling appropriate salary conversion.
The Prime Minister also emphasized that sustainable solutions are required not only for salary issues in the education sector but also for salary-related concerns in several other sectors. Accordingly, the government plans to appoint a new Salary Commission. Through this commission, the government expects to provide lasting solutions to the issues faced by teachers and principals within this year.
In accordance with the service minute of the Principals’ Service, several training programmes have been made mandatory for the professional development of principals.
These include, Induction training at the beginning of service, capacity development training prior to promotion to Grade II and Grade I, and periodic awareness programmes conducted at provincial and zonal levels.
The Prime Minister further stated that discussions are undertaking with the Department of Management Services regarding the proposals submitted by principals’ associations. Based on the responses received, the government is prepared to take the necessary steps through the Cabinet of Ministers.
[Prime Minister’s Media Division]
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