The final decision on the SLFP’s Presidential candidate must be taken within the next week, UPFA General Secretary MP Mahinda Amaraweera said yesterday at the weekly UPFA media briefing at the SLFP headquarters.
Amaraweera said the SLFP and the SLPP will continue to hold talks on the Presidential candidate and the proposed alliance. “But we have to reach a final decision with regard to this within next week before nominations of candidates for the Presidential election are called for,” he said.
“We hope that we will be able to come to a common agreement. If not, the SLFP will field a separate candidate, but we will not support the UNP,” he said. He said there was no issue with regard to the policies of the two parties. But the only issue is that the SLFP supporters want to have the hand symbol as the symbol of the proposed alliance and the SLPP supporters want the ‘flower bud’ as the symbol. So the SLFP proposed to have a neutral symbol since it is the only way to solve this issue, he said.
(Daily news)