The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna will begin its “village to village” ward-level meetings next week, the party’s National Organiser Namal Rajapaksa said on Wednesday.
He announced it during a discussion in Parliament with the party’s National Convener D. V. Chanaka and MP Chanaka Madugoda, Hiru News reported at 6.48 p.m.
Rajapaksa said there is strong opposition to the government and that it is governing through repression (මර්දනය). The meetings, he said, will take the party village by village to inform people of the government’s failures — and he said he has made firm requests to seat organisers to hold the ward meetings quickly.
What the Sinhala actually says about his title
Hiru describes Rajapaksa as the SLPP’s ජාතික සංවිධායක — National Organiser. This matters because he is widely referred to by other titles, and the two senior party roles named in this single filing are easy to merge: D. V. Chanaka is identified as National Convener (ජාතික කැඳවුම්කරු), a different office.
The programme itself is described as ගමින් ගමට කොට්ඨාස රැස්වීම් — ward meetings, conducted village to village. The unit is the ward (කොට්ඨාසය), not the village, and seat organisers are the people being told to convene them. That is an internal party mobilisation structure, not a series of public rallies, and the distinction is in the Sinhala.
This is a schedule, not a new campaign
Readers should not take this as the launch of a new initiative. The SLPP’s grassroots turn has been running for months, and this desk has reported it twice before: in August, when Rajapaksa set out the grassroots campaign, and in September, when he claimed youth voters were returning to the party.
What is new in Wednesday’s filing is timing and urgency — a start date of next week, and organisers being pressed to move fast. The pressure is the detail worth noting: a party leader publicly stating that he has had to make firm requests of his own seat organisers is describing a mobilisation that is not yet happening at the pace he wants.
Not reported
Hiru does not say which date next week the meetings begin, how many wards or electorates are covered, how long the programme runs, or whether it is tied to any forthcoming election.
It does not report what the “repression” claim refers to — no incident, case or action is cited — and carries no government response to it. It does not say whether other party seniors are taking part, whether Mahinda Rajapaksa or Basil Rajapaksa will attend, or what the meetings are intended to produce.
On sourcing. This is a single-source report from one verified newsroom, based on remarks made to media in Parliament. No other verified outlet had filed on the announcement at the time of writing. Party organisational announcements of this kind are routinely carried by one outlet only.
On the names. The two officials named alongside Rajapaksa are transliterated here from Hiru’s Sinhala (ඩී.වී චානක, චානක මාදුගොඩ); English spellings of both vary across outlets, and Hiru gives no English rendering of either.
Source: Hiru News (Sinhala).