Sports Minister Harin Fernando on Sunday resigned from his post following the embarrassing defeat of his party’s candidate Sajith Premadasa in the presidential election. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the main candidates from the opposition, historycally swept the election, as results were declared today morning.
“Respecting the people’s mandate I am stepping down as Minister of Sports, Telecommunications & Foreign Employment. I am also resigning from my positions at UNP. I Take this opportunity to thank every one who supported me in my tenure, hope good work done will be continued” Harin Fernando posted on his twitter handle.
Harin was the main architect behind pushing Sajith as presidential candidate, when even the majority of his party members were opposing it. In the process, he antagonized majority of people within his own party, including the top brass. Even during the election campaign, Harin took the centre stage on attacking Gotabaya Rajapaksa by falsely highlighting his dual citizenship matter in order to mislead Sri Lanka voters.
As a Sports Minister, Harin’s disastrous tenure will be best remembered for running the Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) like his own private limited company, with issuing Special Directives every second day! Also, he allowed International Cricket Council (ICC) to interfere in SLC internal matters, by going behind top brass of the world governing body. In addition, he never allowed SLC to run independently, shamelessly promoted his nephew Angelo Perera and included him in every possible squad, while naming solid test player Dimuth Karunaratne as ODI captain.
