Manamendra – another mistake of the UNP

Giving nomination in the Colombo District to Sarath Manamendra who is seeking election to the Colombo District under No42 appears to be a grave mistake on the part of the UNP.

He is the leader of the ‘Nava Sihala Urumaya’ who don’t have more than a handful of followers, and he is unlikely to garner anymore than 1000 votes, despite a daily dose of ads in the Daily Lankadeepa  extolling his fight against the nasty dictatorship we live in. Mercifully his ads have now stopped with effect from today.

I understand that there have been various pressures being put on the paper to remove the offending words, and these were communicated to Manemendra who had insisted they be retained. Legal advice had been taken which was to remove the words. As we don’t have freedom of speech in Sri Lanka and libel laws are not sufficiently broad to permit opinions being expressed, one would have expected him to have understood the reality of Sri Lanka.

There are some people in politics who don’t understand that they are just people, without a following, and why this is so.

I won’t be surprised if the scurrilous rag called Mawbima, will pick up on this dispute to go to town in their pages, for want of any news for them to pick on, as if this is important.

Let this be another example for the UNP NOT to get entangled with riff raff and scum, and keep to their policy, however unpleasant it may be at the moment as it is unpopular with the masses who are still drunk with the misinformation publicity of a Government, which will take a few more years to be realized as a CON.

In the end it is the decency of the individual that matters, and it seems that Manamendra is as far removed from that due to his personality flaws, and will in time get his just desserts!

Time to get back to the saner point, and not get down to the negativity of a few losers. It is time to get the message across to the masses, not be fooled by a Govt. and show their dissatisfaction by voting against it, decisively.