The government has decided to space out the series of islandwide public rallies that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is due to attend, Agriculture Minister K.D. Lal Kantha said on Wednesday, the Daily Mirror reported.
Speaking to reporters, the Minister said the National People’s Power (NPP) had originally planned two rallies in each district with the President’s participation, to mark the completion of two years of the government’s term.
What has changed
The party has now revised that schedule to increase the intervals between events.
“We had initially planned to hold the rallies at short intervals. However, following the revision of the schedule, some rallies may be held later than originally planned. All the rallies will be held as scheduled, but with longer intervals between them instead of being held according to a tight timetable.”
The distinction the Minister draws is between the programme and its pace. On his account nothing has been cancelled — the full set of rallies remains planned, and only the spacing has changed, with the consequence that individual events may now fall later than first advertised.
The series so far
President Dissanayake began the rallies on 6 September in Kalutara, followed by events in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.
Three districts in ten days is a brisk pace against a programme of two rallies in each of the country’s 25 districts, which would run to 50 events. That arithmetic is the most concrete indication of what “short intervals” would have meant, though the Daily Mirror does not set it out and the Minister does not say how long the series was originally meant to take.
The Polonnaruwa event has already drawn attention for a different reason: the absence of the Agriculture Minister and his deputy from the NPP’s inaugural farmers’ rally there. Lal Kantha is the Agriculture Minister, and Wednesday’s remarks are the first reported occasion on which he has addressed the rally programme since. The Daily Mirror does not connect the two, and he is not reported as having been asked about the earlier absence.
Not reported
The Minister gives no reason for the revision. The Daily Mirror’s report carries his description of the change and nothing on what prompted it — no mention of cost, scheduling conflicts, security, turnout, the parliamentary calendar or any other factor.
It does not say how many rallies have been rescheduled or by how long, which districts are affected, when the series is now expected to conclude, or whether the two-rallies-per-district plan survives the revision intact. It does not say who took the decision or when, and carries no comment from the President’s office or from NPP headquarters.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the change at the time of writing. The NewsFirst and Hiru listings carried nothing on it, and a domain-restricted search across Ada Derana, Island, Daily FT, EconomyNext, Daily News, Colombo Gazette and news.lk returned no same-day report, so this account rests on a single source.
