Provincial Councilors Shiral Lakthilaka and Maithri Gunaratne vowed today to continue their campaign against United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe until he was removed from the leadership

The duo said so at a media briefing held to inform the media about their political careers after they were expelled from the UNP.

Mr. Gunaratne accused some members of the party of removing them from the party membership.

“The UNP leader is carrying out a contract given to him by the government. This is why he is so keen on expelling members from the party. He is destroying the party by expelling its members,” he said.

He added that these expulsions would also adversely affect the upcoming provincial council elections and predicted that the UNP would not be able to win the elections.

Mr. Lakthilaka said some 2.5 million party members had left the UNP due to the failure of the leadership and added that the number of UNP MPs had been reduced from 94to 41 today.

Blaming the UNP leader for the failure in the party, he challenged General Secretary Tissa Attanayake to contest the Central Provincial Council election and become the Chief Minister there.

However Mr. Gunaratne said that they were not responsible for the attack on Party Headquarters ‘Sirikotha’ and added that uprisings were due to the lack of democracy in the party.(Lahiru Pothmulla )