Sajith Premadasa, leader of opposition United National Party (UNP), has stated his party will now have a new “vision and outlook” as he pledged to “give the top most priority to the security of the Sinhala Buddhist motherland”.
Colombo Page reports Premadasa as telling an audience in Galle that for his party “clearly the number one priority of the Opposition is to ensure the security of the nation”, as it prepares for parliamentary elections later this year.
His pledges echo many of the same promises he made during his failed presidential campaign last year, and that of current Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has run on a platform of strengthening Sri Lanka’s security forces. Both parties campaigned on staunchly Sinhala Buddhist platforms, vowing not to prosecute Sri Lankan troops accused of war crimes and extensively paying deference to senior Buddhist clergy.
In the wake of the United National Party’s (UNP) loss at the Sri Lankan presidential elections, Ranil Wickremesinghe also called on the party to examine on how it lost its Sinhala Buddhist voter base and forge ahead with Buddhist principles.
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