The UNP and JVP said that the ruling SLFP-led coalition had turned President’s House in Kandy into a dansala during the campaign for the Uva PC polls on August 8.

UNP MP Palitha Range Bandara yesterday said had the UPFA been confident of a comfortable victory at Uva, it wouldn’t have had to bribe supporters of opposition parties. Had they spent their own funds to feed people of the entire Uva province no one would have objected, he said accusing the government of squandering taxpayers’ money on the SLFP campaign. According to him, thousands of people had been taken to the Kandy President’s House in SLTB buses and offered a plate of rice and curry after being addressed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In an interview with The Island, the Puttalam District MP said though the government had boasted of a resounding win on the strength of the armed forces’ victory over the LTTE, the SLFP and its coalition partners were making a desperate attempt to woo voters. He said that the government had offered State land, jobs and a range of other benefits to people, particularly opposition supporters.

He said that elderly women had received invitations from the government to attend workshops on beauty culture.

The government had flooded the province with politicians as well as public servants and political stooges too in a bid to demoralise the opposition, he said. "People are being offered ballpoint pens, packets of biscuits and a range of other items," he said

The MP said that the government was worried that it couldn’t win Uva only on the LTTE’s defeat. Claiming that the much publicised Mathata Thitha programme had been a farce, he asserted that the so called campaign to wipe out organised gangs and prohibit the screening of movies with adult themes, too, were basically propaganda moves.

Though the government, particularly Wimal Weerawansa’s National Freedom Front (NFF), talked of values, the Tourism Minister Nandana Gunatilleke and Piyasiri Wijenayake, in charge of the non-Cabinet Cultural Affairs portfolio had allowed an indecent tourism promotion campaign on the Hikkaduwa beaches. Girls who wore tiny brassieres and just four inch long skirts had been allowed to dance on the beach, he said, adding that their semi nude photographs would now be available on the net. These sex shows were taking place close on the heels of the government banning both students and teachers from taking mobile phones into school premises.

Responding to our queries, the MP said that brazen attacks on the UNP during previous PC polls conducted by the Rajapaksa administration had brought immense pressure on them. He said that setting fire to top UNP member Dr. John Pulle’s Anuradhapura residence during PC polls campaign in the North Central Province had been carried out in the presence of senior police officials in charge of Anuradhapura.

Bandara said that he wouldn’t succumb to government pressure though his life was at stake.

The MP said that the judiciary, too, wouldn’t escape political pressure and the recent transfer of the Anuradhapura Chief Magistrate was just one case in point.