By Vindya Amaranayake
Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Jathika Hela Urumaya are expected to present their much delayed proposals to the All Party Representative Committee within the next two weeks, The Nation learns.
Their delay caused several committee meetings to be postponed. As a result, the United National Party members threatened to withdraw from the APRC. However, the APRC Chairman Minister Tissa Vitarana said, the delay of the SLFP representatives from submitting their proposals was mostly due to them being ministers with busy schedules.
“Even the Prime Minister is a member of their representative group, and they are all ministers. Therefore they might take a little more time in submitting their proposals,” he said.
Referring to the UNP’s statement that they would withdraw from the APRC if the SLFP and the JHU would not submit their proposals soon, the minister said that the UNP has only temporarily refrained from attending meetings.
“They said they will continue to participate only after the SLFP and JHU present their proposals. They have used the broader term ‘government’ to refer to the SLFP, but will continue their participation after these proposals are submitted,” he added.
In the mean time, SLFP representative to the committee, Minister Wishwa Warnapala said, their proposals will be submitted within the next two weeks. “This is a very grave matter. We do not want to rush this process, as the SLFP proposals are generally considered to contain the views of the government,” he said.
The SLFP representative group chaired by the Prime Minister Rathnasiri Wickremanayake along with the members Sarath Amunugama, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, W.D.J. Seneviratne and Susil Premajayanth met several times during the past two weeks to formulate their response to the Vitarana proposals.
Minister Warnapala said, since the SLFP is a large party with a strong voter base, they cannot treat this matter as trivial. “When we come to an agreement on the response, we will have to present it to the party’s Central Committee. Then only we can submit it to the APRC,” he added.
However, Warnapala said that he would try his utmost to make sure that they will be presented no later than in two weeks time.
Jathika Hela Urumaya representative to the APRC Udaya Gammanpila said that their proposals will be ready within the next week. “We completely reject Vitarana proposals. We cannot agree to any of the points mentioned there. Therefore, we have to formulate an alternative set of proposals. That is why we needed a little more time,” he said.
He added that the JHU being a responsible party cannot present a one and a half page response to this kind of grave matter.