Senior Parliamentarian of the Joint Opposition said it was President Maithripala Sirisena who wanted to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the house of former Minister S.B. Dissanayake.

Speaking to Colombo Telegraph on the condition of anonymity, the Parliamentarian said Sirisena sent a message through S.B. Dissanayake to Rajapaksa saying he wanted to discuss “several important issues.”

“The former President did not want to meet Sirisena initially. but Rajapaksa agreed to a meeting as Sirisena pleaded for one,” he said, confirming that the meeting held this week at the Colombo residence of Dissanayake.

“I am not sure if they talked about forming a caretaker government as speculated by some media reports, but President Sirisena wanted to know how he could work with the Joint Opposition in the future,” the Parliamentarian explained, adding that Sirisena, at the meeting, sounded worried about the foreign exchange crisis.

“Our position remains the same. There will be no agreement whatsoever as long as the SLFP remains in the government with the UNP. We can only work together when the SLFP leaves the government. In fact, the ball is now in the SLFP’s court. We have not made any final decision on the matter,” he said.

According to the JO Parliamentarian, President Sirisena had told Rajapaksa at the meeting that the UPFA Executive Committee would soon make a final decision on leaving the ‘national government’.

The meeting between Rajapaksa and Sirisena took place while Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was not in the country.