The biggest ever May Day Rally organised by the UPFA, after the elimination of the three decade-old terrorism, appealed to the.

Addressing the first post-war rally in Town Hall ground, Colombo under the theme, “Power to the workplace, Dynamism to the factory, Peace to the motherland”, the President said the Opposition should realise that the people have given a clear mandate to the Government to take the country forward.

President said whatever the challenges may be, the Government would take every possible measure for the well-being of the country’s working class, a major component of the country's economy.

The Government is doing its level best to uplift the living conditions of the people, which is what the people expect from it. Our prime responsibility is to unite the broken hearts of the communities and develop the economy by creating a peaceful environment to each and everyone to live in harmony. “The country before us”, should be our motto. Everybody should be united to carry out the country’s development process, irrespective of political differences, he said.

President Rajapaksa said:” Today we celebrate the May Day with humility. It is the working class which has to face the various hardships when a war is waged in a country. However, the working class in Sri Lanka would certainly go into history as the key element which laid the foundation to our war heroes to put an end to the three-decade old war against terrorism.

In a situation where the Government had launched military operations to defeat terrorism, whatever problems they had, the country’s working class acted with a lot of responsibility and cooperated with the Government.”

Even though the Government had launched military operations against the terrorists, it did not curtail the rights of the working class, the President said.

The President said the Government took measures to rebuild a large number of State institutions which had collapsed. The Government could achieve all those significant victories as a result of its close relationship maintained with the working class. “The political experience gained by me as a politician who has closely worked with the working class also helped to achieve these victories”.

The country’s working class has also proved that they are the people who has the ability to unite all the communities by turning the great victory achieved by the nation into reality. The support of the working class is essential towards the development process.

They are in the forefront which can give the leadership to the Government’s development drive. It is the responsibility of the working class to win this development war, he said.