Ranil puts his foot down, vows to defend Sirikotha come what may

The courts had declared that Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) was a separate party and UNPers who would try to subvert the party by working with them would be punished, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said Saturday night addressing a rally in Hatton.

Wickremesinghe said so, addressing a rally organized by a UNP candidate for the coming election.

“Some people are saying that they will capture Sirikotha. If they try to do that they will have to go to jail. We are trying to capture the government not party offices,” he said.

Wickremesinghe added that when they removed those who had joined the SJB from the UNP, those members went to court. Two separate courts had ruled that SJB and the UNP were two different parties and the UNP leadership was right to remove UNPers that joined SJB, he said.

“If they want they can go to international courts. They can even go before gods. But the answer will be the same. We will even remove local councillors that go against the party,” he said.

The UNP leader added that the UNP had done a lot of work for the betterment of the Nuwara Eliya district. The JR Jayewardene government commenced the Mahaweli Project from Nuwara Eliya, Wickremesinghe said. Jayewardene also gave a large number of Indian origin estate sector workers citizenship and he too had given citizenship to some.

Wickremesinghe said that the UNP had also done a great deal to improve the education facilities of the district. “We started AL classes in many estate schools. Sri Pada teacher training school was started by a UNP government. During the previous government many schools were developed under ‘the best school is the nearby school’ initiative,” he said.

Wickremesinghe also warned of a second wave of COVID-19 and criticized the government for not increasing the number of PCR tests done in a day.

“I want to develop the economy. We need to strengthen the rupee. We need to ensure that the businesses don’t collapse and that jobs are not lost,” he said.