Dayasiri’s three-year attempt to join govt. has succeeded - John

Former UNP dissident MP, Dayasiri Jayasekera, after making many attempts to join the government, over the last three years, had finally succeeded, the UNP said yesterday.Chief Opposition Whip John Ameratunga, addressing a press conference in Colombo, said that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had kept Jayasekera waiting for three long years and finally decided to give him SLFP membership
on Wednesday to give the false impression that UNPers were deserting their party in large numbers in the run-up to the upcoming North Western Provincial Council Election.

It was only recently that Jayasekera had submitted a written apology for violating party discipline. After denying plans to join the government, he had even sat in the Nominations Committee that selected UNP candidates for the NWPC Polls on Tuesday, Ameratunga noted.

The Chief Opposition Whip observed that amidst various allegations being levelled against Dayasiri, his conduct prior to defecting had exposed him to be a very unprincipled politician who did not even have the courage to tell the UNP leader whom he had met on Monday of his decision to leave.

Dayasiri had also lost his credibility due to his many secret meetings with the President, while remaining in the UNP and criticising the ruling UPFA, MP Amaratunga said, adding that the former dissident MP had committed political suicide, since he obviously did not know how the SLFP under the Rajapaksas, functioned.

Responding to Dayasiri’s allegations that UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was a dictator compared to President Rajapaksa and that he had been denied his due place in the UNP, Ameratunga said that a party had to be run according to its constitution and not according to the whims and fancies of some dissident members.

Dayasiri had been appointed the UNPs Deputy Chief Whip in Parliament, but had bigger ambitions and ganged up with those who not only frequently slandered the party and its leadership in public, but were also responsible for the disgraceful stone throwing mob attack on the party headquarters ‘Sirikotha’, Amaratunge said.