UNP and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe called President Mahinda Rajapaksa a failed leader and accused the latter of marketing war to cover up his failure.

The UNP leader said that the President could not build houses for 11,000 families displaced by the 2004 tsunami. He was hiding behind the battlefield victories the troops were achieving by sacrificing life and limb.

Addressing a UNP election rally in the Matale town on Saturday in support of party’s candidates contesting for the Central Provincial Council, UNP leader Wickremesinghe said: "It’s no wonder that a President, who failed miserably to build houses for tsunami victims, is marketing the war. When he assumed duties in 2005 there were 250,000 persons with no houses. Work had commenced to build 100,000 houses and he pledged to resettle them all. But still there are 11,000 families with no houses at all."

Wickremesinghe said that private sector and NGOs had built 14,000 houses for the tsunami victims. The government had to build only 11,000 houses and even if it had built 4,000 new houses a year, the task could have been completed by now, he said. The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa had built houses at 100,000 per year.

Now the President and his ministers said the war against terrorism was over, said the UNP leader asking if so why the dividends of peace were not passed on to the poor masses suffering under heavy cost of living. "When we asked for salary increases for public servants, the President said that there was a war and requested us to tighten our belts. But the salaries of ministers were increased by 150 percent, which means by Rs 100,000. This increment was given to ministries in the form of a house rent. But most ministers had their own houses and others were residing in government houses, the UNP leader said.

"Ministers had no qualms about availing themselves of the house rent. Only Karu Jayasuriya rejected it and joined forces with us," he said.