6 April 2016 12:00 am
The leaders of the Betel leaf party held a series of propaganda meetings at the grassroots level across the country in the recent past. Some of these meetings held to strengthen the party organization at the periphery ended in chaos when organized attempts were made to sabotage them by interested groups from within the party.
At several meetings, speakers billed to speak slipped away instead of facing noisy protests, boos and catcalls.
A meeting held in the Galle area the other day too ended in a big commotion when organized groups succeeded in sabotaging it the usual way. As sections of the crowd began hooting and jeering at the organizers and guest speakers, some people started hurling stones and other missiles at the stage. A deputy purohita, incidentally, the Diyawanna member functioning as the party’s organizer for the area, made several appeals to boisterous crowds in vain to stop the ruckus they were raising... And when the situation took a turn for the worse, the organizers decided to call it a day and leave the scene unscathed.
The ring leaders of the mob attack on the meeting remained at the venue of the meeting to share the fun of having successfully carried out their plan.
They had brought some bottles too to celebrate the occasion and some of them were already drunk and boisterous.
“Macho, didn’t we carry out our job to the letter?” One mob leader exulted.
“But I feel we have done a dirty thing, Machang. We hooted at our own party leaders,” another party supporter repented.
“What are we to do? Our own man who organized the meeting wanted us to organize the ‘boo squad’ and break it up. And we did our part well!” the first mob leader replied.
“But our man won’t get the blame. He will continue to be in good terms with the party leaders. We become the culprits at the end of the day,” an elderly man moaned.