Tissa Attanayake & Chandrani Bandara |
From Colombo Telegraph
UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake reinforced suspicions rampant about his allegiances with the regime for months by agreeing to cross over to Mahinda Rajapaksa‘s Government for the “small sum” of Rs. 500 million, Colombo Telegraph reliably learns.
UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake reinforced suspicions rampant about his allegiances with the regime for months by agreeing to cross over to Mahinda Rajapaksa‘s Government for the “small sum” of Rs. 500 million, Colombo Telegraph reliably learns.
Attanayake has admitted himself to the
Asiri Hospital in Colombo since Saturday night.
Rs. 200 million has already been paid to
Attanayake in advance of his crossover. The advance is believed to have been
paid out to a third party.
Attanayake is expected to make the move in
Parliament on Monday unless a flaw emerges in the Rajapaksa Government’s plans.
UNP MP Chandrani Bandara who is on intimate terms with
Attanayake has been part of the 500 million deal. It is believed the Government
has baited both MPs for that sum of money. Attanayake is a National List UNP
member having failed to win a seat from his electorate in the last
Parliamentary election.
Colombo
Telegraph exclusively revealed details some months ago about how the
Government had won over Attanayake by handing over a diplomatic posting in
Dubai to Bandara’s son Rukshan.
Since that
time, Attanayake has been working hand in glove with Tiran Alles, now exposed as a Rajapaksa
Government proxy to bring Sajith Premadasa back into the fold as Deputy Leader
of the UNP. The Alles-Attanayake-Premadasa bandwagon firmly believed that
Premadasa’s re-entry would cement Ranil Wickremesinghe’s candidacy as presidential
contender to face off against Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Colombo
Telegraph can now reveal that the deal between Attanayake and the Rajapaksa
regime was struck by no other than master wheeler dealer Tiran Alles. Alles
recently attempted to arm-twist Sobitha Thero into backing down from the common
opposition platform in order to allow President Rajapaksa’s ride to his third
term to be smooth sailing.
Alles, together
with his ally in the UNP Sajith Premadasa has been on a hectic mission to derail
the common candidacy to ensure Ranil
Wickremesinghe becomes
Rajapaksa’s main contender in the election.
Premadasa’s grand plan, masterminded by
Alles was for Wickremesinghe to lose the presidency and be forced to hand over
the reins of the UNP to Ranasinghe Premadasa’s son.
Facing a crisis
because of the shocking move by the opposition to field Maithripala Sirisena Alles has now become the chief broker
for the Rajapaksa regime. He will try to help the Government to bait UNP
members who are on the fence in order to dampen the Opposition momentum.
Colombo Telegraph reliably learns that
several other UNP members are also in negotiations to join the Government. Many
of the members are staunch supporters of Sajith Premadasa – including Buddhika
Pathirana and Palitha Range Bandara.
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