Former diplomat Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has contradicted NFF Leader Wimal Weerawansa’s claim that over 500000 people attended the rally in Nugegoda, stating that the crown participation amounted to over hundred thousand.

In an article carried on Colombo Telegraph a day after the rally, Jayatilleka said former President was “wanted” by over hundred thousand people who gathered at Nugegoda on Wednesday. However, multiple journalists who were present at the event told Asian Mirror that the actual crowd participation was over 50,000. 

“There was a WANTED poster out for Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday at Nugegoda, and it wasn’t one for crimes of corruption, human rights violation, dictatorship pasted by the JVP. It was a WANTED poster made of over a hundred thousand persons, which said that he was Wanted by the people, by the nation, as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka,” Jayatilleke said in his article.

“The main players at Nugegoda were not the personalities who organized it or addressed the gathering. It was the people. They were packed tightly together, spilling over and swarming the area, more enthusiastic than an American football crowd, waving Sri Lankan flags and posters of Mahinda Rajapaksa,” Jayatilleke also said.

“There was another main player at the Nugegoda meeting and he wasn’t even there. That was Mahinda Rajapaksa. It would have been the classic case of what Prof AW Singham named in his book “The Hero and the Crowd”, except that this time the hero wasn’t there and was there at the same time. The absent presence was of course, Mahinda, whose name was roared out by the crowd; welling up from its bowels.

It was as if the personalities on the stage were facilitators and conductors of that energy that came from the crowd. It was an energy that ran along an invisible circuit extending from Nugegoda to Medamulana and back.

The message from the rally had two intended audiences: Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa. The message was that Maithripala Sirisena was safe, unchallenged, acknowledged as President but that the same did not go for the unelected Prime Minister and his UNP government. The message was that the people want Mahinda back in the equation; that the 58 lakhs that voted for him and the 58% of the Sinhala majority that voted for him, will not go unrepresented; almost disenfranchised. The message was also that Mahinda Rajapaksa will not be allowed to enjoy a peaceful retirement and that his people have at least one more national service they expect from him, which is to defeat the anti-national Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister and institute an SLFP administration,” the former diplomat added.