As Sri Lanka’s Sinhala nationalist parties tussle over their support for current president Ranil Wickremesinghe ahead of presidential polls next month, the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) is reported to be considering announcing Namal Rajapaksa as its own official candidate.
In recent days, dozens of members of parliament, including SLPP members met Wickremesinghe at the Presidential Secretariat to pledge their support for his candidacy. But without the official backing of the party, and simmering discontent amongst its members that they haven’t fielded their own candidate, reports swirled this week that Namal Rajapaksa – the son of accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The Rajapaksa press team sent out a series of flashy portraits of the controversial 38-year-old on Tuesday, with a potential official unveiling set to take place later this week.
One of a series of photographs of Namal Rajapaksa sent out by the Rajapaksa media team.
Meanwhile, Wickremesinghe managed to secure the support of a breakaway faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), one of the Sinhala South’s oldest political parties and traditional rivals of his United National Party (UNP).
The SLFP had been divided into three groups with one of them being led by former president Maithripala Sirisena, who had an acrimonious split from Wickremesinghe during his tenure in government, the other led by Dayasiri Jayasekara and the central committee having the support of ministers such as Nimal Siripala, Mahinda Amaraweera and Lasantha Alagiyawanna.
The SLFP has been embroiled in internal party struggles for months with different groups putting forward their own representative.
The party offices have been under police guard in recent months, as court cases were filed between members clamouring for control of the party.
Several members of the SLFP were forced to leave after finding that the office was locked last month.
While the infighting continued, two security guards were even reportedly held hostage at the SLFP headquarters in Colombo for five days. Earlier last week, Sri Lanka's Minister of Justice Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa announced his resignation from his ministerial post to contest the elections on the SLFP ticket.
The support from two of Sri Lanka's main political parties bolsters Wickremesinghe's bid for the presidency with the election scheduled for September 21st this year. Wickremesinghe in a Facebook post said he was grateful to those who aligned with him.
A total of 17 candidates have registered to stand in the polls thus far.
