13 July 2016 12:00 am
This member of the former royal family, the virtual second in command of the previous regime who went into self-exile is now back in the political scene as large as life. Initially there were strong protests against this one-time powerful sibling’s return to the party fold even from the JO group which, however, gradually died down.
The former powerful sibling made a grandstand show of his presence back in the fold when he organized the JO group’s public rally in Badulla.
However, the opposition to the sibling subdued for some time has begun rearing up, they say.
Earlier there were seven or eight JO stalwarts who vociferously opposed the one time powerful sibling being given any high office in the party, but this number has now come down to three, they say.
Of this three member-anti-sibling group, two are big-mouthed former purohitas – one from the South and the other from the Centre. The third one is said to be a first-comer to Diyawanna from the South.
The vociferous one from the South in fact, boycotted the public rally held in Badulla to coincide with the inauguration of the anti-yahapalanaya campaign to register his protest against the return of ‘the author of the party’s defeat’.
The protesting trio are standing fast to their argument that the return of the sibling had provided additional ammunition to the government to attack the grouping led by the former strongman.
Meanwhile, a JO member had complained to the former strongman that a certain bigwig in yahapalanaya was popping up the anti-sibling trio. However, the former strongman had shrugged it off quoting the popular Sinhala proverb: Seeing one dream does not mean the coming of the dawn.