By Cyril Wimalasurendre
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Kandy District Organisation (KDO) has urged President Kumaratunga to initiate an inquiry into what it described as certain anti-party and indisciplined statements made by the former KDO president, Minister D. M. Jayaratne, during the last parliamentary poll.

These statements, it alleged, which received wide publicity in the print and electronic media prevented the People’s Alliance from obtaining more seats from the Kandy district.

The newly elected KDO president, Power and Energy Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte told journalists at a news conference in Kandy last Friday that at a meeting summoned on January 21, the KDO unanimously resolved to call upon the President to hold an inquiry into the conduct of minister Jayaratne as his statements were of a ‘betrayal nature and were injurious to the party’.

If not for the wide media publicity given to Jayaratne’s statements during the election period, the PA could have easily won nine seats in the Kandy district, instead of six, Ratwatte charged.

He said that there were many people prepared to come forward with verbal and written submissions and produce sufficient evidence to prove that Jayaratne’s utterances were ‘irresponsible’.

Jayaratne himself was a candidate who contested the Kandy district with Ratwatte.

The resolution adopted at the KDO sessions to be forwarded to president Kumaratunga stated: ‘Minister Jayaratne’s statement at a ‘crucial and decisive hour’ of the poll, that candidates Anuruddha Ratwatte, Mahinda Abeykoon and Mahindananda Aluthgamage were engaged in large scale election malpractices prevented the PA from bagging more seats in the district. Wide publicity given to this statement was beneficial to political opponents during the election.

‘As a result of statements of this nature, the police in the Kandy district made use of the opportunity to use force on PA activists during a decisive moment of the poll. This crippled the PA campaign in the district’.

Citing an example, the KDO claimed that as many as 64 PA activists in the Galagedera electorate were taken into police custody sans justifiable reasons. The chief organiser and a number of Pradeshiya Sabha members of Galagedera were threatened with death.

‘The highly oppressive manner in which the police acted against PA supporters in some areas of Kandy district benefited the UNP. If not for the utterances of minister Jayaratne the PA in Kandy district would have been in a better position and the party in a politically stronger position’, the KDO said.

‘We urge the President to appoint a special commission to probe the ‘partial’ actions of the police in the Kandy district during the election period, and submit a report’, minister Ratwatte said.