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Sri Lanka's Leftist Party Not to Support Opposition
General Secretary of Sri Lanka's leftist JVP or People's Liberation Front Tilvin Silva said Monday his party will not support the main opposition United National Party (UNP), the state-run Daily News said on Tuesday.
The JVP will also not back the present government at this stage but would support any party that would undertake to implement a socio-economic and religious policy that would be in the greater interest of the masses, he was quoted by the paper as saying.
Silva, who was addressing a party branch meeting at Kandy, a central city of the country, said that in the past leftist parties had tried to prop up capitalist parties and reduced the people to poverty. Claiming to serve the people they had only become ministers. he added that his party would never do that.
He said if his party backed the UNP they would get at least 10 portfolios and if they backed the government also they would be assured of various privileges but they did not want anything other than to serve the people.
The government has lost its majority in the Parliament when Rauf Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), who was also the minister of internal and international trade and commerce, Muslim religious affairs and shipping development, decided to quit the government last Wednesday hours after he was sacked by Kumaratunga.
The government faces a vote for the no-confidence motion submitted on Friday by UNP which has 89 seats in the Parliament. The vote is expected to take place in the Parliament next month.
With its 109 seats in the Parliament, four short of the required 113-seat simple majority in the 225-member parliament for its survival, the support of JVP is crucial to the government.
The JVP said on Sunday that it will let its 10 lawmakers to decide how they will vote for the no-confidence motion.
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