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| Sunday,13 November 2005 |
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Politics |  |
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Debate abandoned, Ranil retreats The Sunday Observer reliably learns that Opposition Leader has failed to give his consent to hold the much talked about debate between him and rival Presidential candidate Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse. It was the Opposition leader who threw an open challenge to the Prime Minister to have debate with him. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge and subsequently the two sides appointed two coordinators to facilitate arrangements for the debate. It was at the end of two sessions of talks between the two facilitators- Milinda Moragoda, MP from Ranil Wickremesinghe side and former Deputy Minister Dallas Allahapperuma from Mahinda Rajapakse side that the debate had to be abandoned in view of the inability to agree upon the procedures for conducting it. While the Prime Minister had proposed to have the debate at a public rally with live media coverage by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, the Opposition Leader had wanted to have it at a limited gathering with media coverage being given only by an unspecified TV channel. In order to facilitate the organisation of the public rally the Prime Minister has proposed to cancel the final election rallies of the UPFA and the UNP that were scheduled to be held on November 14 at Borella and Maradana respectively. His proposal was to have the rally for the debate at the Race Course grounds, Colombo with maximum public participation. The name of Secretary to President Premadasa and senior public servant K.H.J. Wijedasa was proposed by the Prime Minister as the moderator.The two coordinators in a joint statement yesterday evening said that the time left according to election regulations to conduct such a serious debate is not enough to finalise all arrangements and hence they decided to conclude talks on the debate expecting to use the experience gained for conducting a debate at a future election. |
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