Presidential hopeful minister Sajith Premadsa has to prove his winning formula mathematically or otherwise if he is to get the starting signal of get set and go from Prime Minster Ranil Wickremasinghe famous for his delaying tactics in political chess.
He noted that the UNP Working Committee will finally pick the Presidential candidate of the party .
The Premier has conveyed this challenge indirectly to minister Sajith Premadasa when he addressed a meeting with civil society and trade union representatives on Sunday 15.
According Mr Wickremesinghe simply having a large vote base in the UNP will not be enough to win the next Presidential elections.
It is very true, when making a calculation using simple mathematics; it is not possible for any presidential candidate to obtain over 50 percent of votes in an electorate of 16 million million voters when three or four main party candidates are ready to contest the poll.
Minister Sajith Premadsa has to prove that he will be able to get 2.8 million extra votes to win presidential race pushing Gotabaya Rajapaksa into second place.
It is gigantic task as the UNP vote base has now eroded to 3.6 million and Mr. Premadasa will have to convince each and every UNP voter that he is capable in managing the country.
But if he can win the hearts of all voters who are opposing the Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election to high office and get their second preference in his favour , then there is no issue in presenting his winning formula to the UNP leader.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa will have to get 1.4 million voteS more than the SLPP vote base of 5 million a s the winning target is 6.4 million votes.
(LI)