Parliamentarian Dayasiri Jayasekara on Sunday (5) sought to clarify his recent remarks suggesting that all opposition forces should unite to defeat the current Government, even if such groups included individuals labelled as racists, thieves, robbers or those facing corruption allegations.
Addressing a media briefing, Jayasekara said his earlier comments had been misconstrued. He claimed that the Government was carrying out a campaign of political repression targeting opposition politicians by branding them as “thieves, robbers, racists or terrorists” before taking legal action against them.
He said his point was that if every opposition figure continued to be labelled and imprisoned in this manner, there would eventually be no one left for the Opposition to work with.
Commenting on criticism directed at him on social media, Jayasekara said he did not use Facebook because, in his view, it was “not a platform where intelligent people engage in debate.”
Referring to the recent arrest of former presidential aide Sugeeshwara Bandara, Jayasekara alleged that opposition politicians were being publicly portrayed as criminals through arrests and accusations.
“Today, this Government is arresting various people. Take the case of Sugeeshwara Bandara. He was stopped in broad daylight in the middle of a road in Colombo and taken away. Everyone in the Opposition is branded either a racist, a thief, a criminal, a drug dealer or a terrorist. If all of them are imprisoned after being given these labels, who will remain for us to work with as the Opposition?” he said.
Jayasekara also dismissed criticism circulating on Facebook, saying, “I don’t use Facebook because it is full of idiots. It is not a place where intelligent people engage in debate.”
