'No Indian backing sought for common candidate agst Rajapaksa'

Sri Lanka's Marxist party JVP today dismissed reports that it had sought India's backing to field a common opposition candidate against President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his bid to seek a third-term in the next polls.
"We do not want Indian brokers if we need to engage political parties. We have never sought assistance of any foreign diplomats. We completely deny this wrong information reported in the press," JVP's propaganda secretary and legislator Vijitha Herath told reporters.
He denied that there's any such secret move by the JVP or People's Liberation Front as speculated in the local media.
A section of the press had said that JVP members had met prominent Buddhist monk, Maduluwawe Sobhitha, and that the meeting was brokered by Indian High Commission officials here.

Sobhitha, a reformist monk with a popular appeal, was thought to be being pushed as a common candidate to run against Rajapaksa when he contests to get re-elected for a third term.
Rajapaksa is expected to call a snap poll in early 2015, an year before the end of his second term.
He was elected for his second six-year term in January 2010 after defeating former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, the then common opposition candidate.
In that election, Rajapaksa, who received large support from the majority Sinhalese for ending the over three decades of separatist armed campaign of the LTTE, polled an overwhelming 60 per cent of the vote.