The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the largest Muslim party representing the country’s legislature, is now stuck in the middle of three different options where the party’s stance on the upcoming presidential election is concerned. The meeting for the SLMC High Command, which was convened yesterday with the aim of making a final decision on the matter, dragged till about 1 am today without any concrete agreement.
Speaking to Asian Mirror, Nizam kariyappar, Media Spokesman of the SLMC, the party is yet to make a final decision on the matter and the party leadership will arrive at a decision after considering its options with utmost care.
However, according to highly placed party sources, a section of the party members are of the view that the party should support the incumbent President with the hope that he would deliver what he has already promised to the Muslim community of Sri Lanka. This point of view has also been strengthened by the decision made by Minister Rishad Bathiudeen’s party to support the government.
Another section of the party’s High Command argue that the party should support Common Candidate of the opposition Maithripala Sirisena as the large majority of Muslim votes arelikely to go in favour of the opposition. “We cannot support one candidate and lose the party,” they have strongly asserted at the High Command meeting last night while adding that there will be a noticeable erosion in the vote-base of at the next General Election, if the party does not support the Common Candidate of the opposition.
Meanwhile, there is another quarter who believe that the party should take an independence stance like the JVP and the Tamil National Alliance, without supporting any specific candidate. They opine that the MPs of the party should resign from positions they hold in the government and act as an independent group before making that decision.
However, the pendulum swung between these three groups at the High Command meeting last night but no concrete decision was made.
When contacted by Asian Mirror, Shafeek Rajabdeen, National Organizer of the SLMC said, the party was not in a hurry to make a decision. “There is a period of one month for the election and we will make a decision after carefully evaluating our options,” he added.
He also said that the party was taking its time to arrive at a conclusion because they do not dissentions and defections n the SLMC in the aftermath of the decision. “We all know that it has happened in the past and we are trying our best to prevent that this time. So, whatever the decision we will make, it will be acceptable to everyone,” Rajabdeen added.
