{"id":146797,"date":"2015-07-01T13:19:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T07:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=146797"},"modified":"2015-07-08T17:43:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T12:13:36","slug":"mr-to-contest-august-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mr-to-contest-august-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"MR To Contest August Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Mahinda+Rajapaksa&amp;x=11&amp;y=3\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> today said he would contest the upcoming general election.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Addressing a gathering at his home<\/span>town<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u00a0Medamulana he said \u201cPeople\u2019s requests asking me to contest cannot be ignored&#8221;.\u00a0Rajapaksa however did not say under which political party he will be contesting but h<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">e urged\u00a0representatives of other political parties to rally around him as they did in 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\"> Since the January defeat,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">SLFP Snubs, Wimal Weerawansa, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Udaya Gammanpila and Dinesh Gunawardena have been campaigning for Rajapaksa and said that their intention is\u00a0filing former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Ministerial candidate at the upcoming general elections.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Mahinda-.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-145103\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Mahinda-.jpg\" alt=\"Mahinda\" width=\"640\" height=\"327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Mahinda-.jpg 665w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Mahinda--300x153.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":145103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,6969,2375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-news","category-popular-stories","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - 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