ECONOMYNEXT — United National Party (UNP) General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara has defended his call for postponing Sri Lanka’s presidential election by two years, claiming that his proposal was not undemocratic nor unconstitutional.

Speaking to reporters at the UNP headquarters Monday June 03 morning, Bandara also claimed that neither opposition leader Sajith Premadasa nor National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake have spoken against his proposal.

“I have made no statement that’s undemocratic. My statement was in line with provisions of the constitution,” the former UNP parliamentarian said.

He quoted Section 86 of Chapter XIII of the constitution which says: “The President may, subject to the provisions of Article 85, submit to the People by Referendum any matter which in the opinion of the President is of national importance.”

Sections 87.1, 87.2 also elaborates on the matter and describes the parliament’s role, said Bandara.

“I spoke of a referendum and parliament’s duty. Neither of this is antidemocratic or unconstitutional. As per the constitution, priority should be given to ensuring people’s right to life,” he said.

“Some parties may be against what I proposed. They may criticse me. But what I ask them is to come to one position as political parties and make a statement on whether they’re ready to continue the ongoing economic programme,” he added.

Bandara claimed that, though thee has been much criticism of his proposal for a postponement of the presidential election, President Wickremesinghe’s rivals Premadasa and Dissanayake have yet to remark on the matter.

“I suggested that [Premadasa] make this proposal in parliament and for [Dissanayake] to second it. But I don’t see that either Premadasa nor Dissanayake is opposed to it. To date, I have not seen nor heard either of them utter a word against this. I believe they have no objection to my proposal which was made for the betterment of the country,” he said. (Colombo/Jun03/2024)

ECONOMYNEXT — Support for leftist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake dropped six percentage points to 39 percent in April, levelling with opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, while support for President Ranil Wickremesinghe increased three points to 13 percent in a presidential election voting intent poll.

The Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) conducted by the Institute for Health Policy showed that, according to its Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) provisional estimates of presidential election voting intent, National People’s Power (NPP) leader Dissanayake and main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) lader Premadasa were now neck and neck while United National Party (UNP) leader Wickremesinghe had made some gains. A generic candidate for the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) had the support of 9 percent of the people surveyed, up 1 percentage point from March.

These estimates use the January 2024 revision of the IHP’s SLOTS MRP model. The latest update is for all adults and uses data from 17,134 interviews conducted from October 2021 to 19 May 2024, including 444 interviews during April 2024. According to the institute, 100 bootstraps were run to capture model uncertainty. Margins of error are assessed as 1–4% for April.

SLOTS polling director and IHP director Ravi Rannan-Eliya was quoted as saying: “The SLOTS polling in April suffered from a lower response rate owing to the New Year holidays, and we think this may have skewed the sample in favour of SJB supporters. The early May interviews partly compensated for this, and it’s possible that our June interviews may result in further revisions
to our model estimates.

Rannan-Eliya also noted that a number of other internet polls may be overestimating support for the NPP or its main constituent party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) by about 10 percent.

“We’ve been asked about some other recent internet polls that showed much higher levels of support for the NPP/JVP. We think these over-estimate NPP/JVP support. SLOTS routinely collects data from all respondents on whether they have internet access, and whether they are willing to participate in an internet survey. These data show that NPP/JVP supporters are far more likely to have internet access and even more likely to be willing to respond to internet surveys, and this difference remains even after controlling for past voting behaviour. Our data indicates internet polls may overestimate NPP/JVP support by about 10 percent, and for this kind of reason we have previously decided that the time is not right to do internet polling,” he said.

According to the IHP, its SLOTS MRP methodology first estimates the relationship between a wide variety of characteristics about respondents and their opinions – in this case, ‘If there was a Presidential Election today, who would you vote for?’– in a multilevel statistical model that also smooths month to month changes. It then uses a large data file that is calibrated to the national population to predict voting intent in each month since October 2021, according to what the multilevel model says about their probability of voting for various parties (‘post-stratification’) at each point in time. The multilevel model was estimated 100 times to reflect underlying uncertainties in the model and to obtain margins of error, the institute said. (Colombo/Jun03/2024)

ECONOMYNEXT – Expolanka Holdings PLC has said it is extending its Exit Offer till 4.30 PM on Monday, 10th June 2024.

SG Holdings, the parent company of Expolanka Holdings Plc, announced on March 1 it was delisting the company from the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Some minority shareholders have filed a case challenging the delisting of Expolanka Holdings PLC before the Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka.

The court is scheduled to hold a further hearing on June 6.

“By reason of the aforesaid and by reason of the many requests received by Foreign shareholders and representatives of deceased shareholders requesting additional time, the Company has taken the decision to extend the Exit Offer till 4.30 PM on Monday, 10th June 2024,” Expolanka said in a stock exchange filing.

“The Payments for the Offer received from 4th June 2024 to 10th June 2024 hall be made on or before, 28th June 2024.

“The timelines as set out in the original Exit Offer too shall continue to remain.” (Colombo/June3/2024)