Mahinda Rajapaksa has not received an official invitation to Victory Day celebrations, his spokesperson Manoj Gamage says.
Mahinda Rajapaksa has not yet received any official invitation to attend today’s Victory Day celebrations, his media spokesperson has stated.
Attorney Manoj Gamage, media spokesperson for the former President, said that Mahinda Rajapaksa, the fifth Executive President of Sri Lanka, had not been formally invited to the state event scheduled for today, May 19.
Speaking to the media, Gamage said the decision to exclude the former President from the official celebration was problematic.
He noted that Mahinda Rajapaksa had provided exceptional leadership to end the thirty-year brutal war.
Gamage emphasized that no official notification or invitation had been sent to the former President to attend the Victory Day celebrations.
He also rejected a statement reportedly made by Minister Upali Pannilage that an invitation had already been extended to Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“The former President has not received any form of invitation to attend the Victory Day celebrations organized by the National People’s Power government. Therefore, I request the relevant minister to refrain from making statements that mislead the public,” Gamage said.
He further pointed out that, in previous years, official invitations for such state events were formally sent through the Presidential Secretariat or the Ministry of Defence.
Gamage also said Victory Day commemorates the war heroes who sacrificed their lives for the motherland.
He added that the day also marks the country’s freedom from LTTE separatist terrorism, which officially brought the thirty-year war to an end on May 18, 2009.
According to Gamage, Victory Day should therefore be celebrated on the same date, May 18.
