Opposition leader never missed a national day party of Norway, yet going to boycott own Independence Day says Hemakumara Nanayakkara

Minister of Agriculture Hema Kumara Nanayakkara speaking on behalf of the United National Party (D) said the decision of the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to boycott the 60th anniversary celebrations of Sri Lanka's independence should be condemned as a treacherous act of a leader of a party whose past leaders toiled hard to gain the country's independence.

"Mr. Wickremesinghe's act," said Nanayakkara of the UNP breakaway group "is another body blow by him against our own motherland."

Speaking at a press briefing in Colombo, Hemakumara Nanayakkara said Wickremesinghe is a person who has never missed a national day party of Norway and was also the leader who had invited the Portuguese to come to Colombo in 2005 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of their cruel occupation of the island nation of Sri Lanka in 1505. "No wonder such a leader was planning to boycott the country's independence celebrations," Nanayakkara said.

In other words, said Nanayakkara, the UNP leader was planning to stop, the garlanding of the UNP founder and Sri Lanka's first Prime Minister Rt. Honourable D.S.Senanayaka, he said.

He said certain sinister organisations connected with Norway and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were boycotting the independence celebrations and he wanted to know whether Wickremesinghe belonged to the same clique.

He said at a time our heroic forces were sacrificing their lives to drive out the last vestiges of terrorism from the country in the North, after liberating the Eastern Province, it was the most treacherous act on the part of the UNP leader to boycott the country's independence celebrations.

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