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| Sunday, 4 December 2005 |
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Politics |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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City buzz ... Billion Rupee Bouquet During the campaign for the Presidential Election, Desamanya Lalith Kotelawela, who heads the Ceylinco Group of Companies, sent a letter of demand for Rs, 1000,000,000 or 1 billion to Minister Mangala Samaraweera, then Minster of Ports and Civil Aviation. The claim was with regard to Minister Samaraweera, who was the co-chairman of the Mahinda Rajapaksha election campaign, allegedly making defamatory statements at press conferences that Kotelawela was seeking to create religious hatred between Christians and Buddhists with the advertising campaign through an NGO headed by him, which advertisements carried Kotelawala's photograph too. Minister Samaraweera also alleged that Kotelawela had resorted to plagiarism in using a photograph of the violence in July 1983 taken by a photographer of the former 'Aththa" newspaper, without the permission of the photographer, to give a wrong impression of radical parties supporting the election of Mahinda Rajapaksha. To Minister Mangala Samaraweera's utter surprise, no sooner he was appointed Foreign Minister under the Mahinda Rajapaksha Government, one of the first greetings he received was a huge bouquet from Lalith Kotelawela, with a card attached congratulating him and wishing him well. Samaraweera is reported to have told friends that he will let the flowers on the bouquet fade away, but will keep very safely the message of congratulations sent by the new saviour of Christianity in Sri Lanka. The buzz in corporate circles is whether the Ceylinco Group would go into the florist business too, to send bouquets to all others to whom Kotelawela has sent letters of demand for millions and billions before the results of the Presidential Election were known, and may do so in the future too. Christians will keep awake watching this flowery progress of Kotelawela. LR |
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