A group of Sri Lanka's opposition members Thursday launched a petition in capital Colombo to name former president Mahinda Rajapakse as the prime ministerial candidate of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in the upcoming parliamentary elections, an official said.
Opposition member and provincial councilor Udaya Gammanpila told reporters that the petition aimed at collecting one million signatures in order to get the former president back into politics, Xinhua news agency reported.
Gammanpila also said that the petition with a million signatures would prove to the new government that a majority continued to support Rajapakse to head the nation.
Rajapakse was defeated in a presidential election last month.
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