“Are you for Gota?” one of them asked. “Are you crazy?” President asked.

After last Tuesday’s weekly Cabinet meeting ended, a handful of ministers turned up at President Maithripala Sirisena’s upper floor office room in the Presidential Secretariat, once the hallowed precincts of Parliament, reported the Sunday Times in Colombo on its weekly political column.

Enemies Within

“Are you going to support former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as presidential candidate?” one of them asked. If the tenor of the question reflected an angry note, so was the reply. “Are you crazy?” asked Sirisena who then exhorted, “I will never do that. I have not taken such a decision.”, the paper revealed;