Supporters are once again rallying round the UNP, which successfully survived attempts by certain persons some years ago to dilute it, said its leader for Colombo Ravi Karunanayake.
Our party’s lone elephant, Ranil Wickremesinghe, is the president today, who contests the presidential elections in 125 days’ time as the nonpartisan candidate after having made revolutionary changes in the country in the past 30 months, he said.
Karunanayake, also a former finance minister, was speaking at the handover of appointment letters to 700 zonal organizers of the party.He said further the country was without electricity, fuel, gas and transport 25 months ago, which all have changed today.
Public life may be difficult, but much better than then and the country is being run in accordance with the law, he said.
Duplicate parties cannot ruin the UNP, which is 75 years old, said Karunanayake.
Speaking further, the former finance minister said;
"At the last presidential election, the UNP candidate polled 5.5 million votes. Six months later, those who tried to dilute the UNP gained just 2.7 million votes.
Taking Muslim and Tamil votes out, that amounted to 2.2 million votes only.
That means three million of UNP voters had become silent.
Now, the incumbent president has been able to woken up those three million voters.
We have corrected out past mistakes and are on a new journey.
We must take a break only after working untiringly in the next 105 days and electing our president again," he added.
Karunanayake sought the support of all for the nonpartisan candidate.
He accused other parties of daydreaming and being extremist.
"Those who refuse to deal with the IMF now describe Elon Musk as an economic assassin after the president met him in Indonesia." he noted.
Karunanayake also urged all to think if those who oppose development aspirations will have a future in this country.
