Respected Ulama, Your Excellency the President, Defense Secretary, Chief of Defence Staff and Head of Joint Operations Command, Chiefs of the three armed forces, Inspector General of Police, Director General of Civil Defense Force, Diplomatic Corps, Media Personnel and Most Valued and Distinguished Invitees, I greet you with the Islamic salutation ‘Assalaamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakaatuh’. May peace and Allah’s blessings be on you!

It is my privilege and honour to have been called upon to propose a vote of thanks on this historic occasion. On behalf of All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama and the entire Muslim Community, I extend very hearty thanks to Your Excellency our President for having allotted time to be with us under Your Excellency’s auspices amidst your hectic schedule and accepted with open arms our felicitation of Your Excellency on the recent unprecedented triumph over the long drawn out terrorism and for Your Excellency’s gracious and generous hospitality in this very fine evening. This is a very clear manifestation of Your Excellency’s goodwill towards the Muslims of our blessed motherland.

Your Excellency’s thought-provoking speech just while ago has given us full confidence that our beloved nation would march forward in the right direction with prosperity and due rights to all the communities.

Your Excellency, We really enjoyed Your Excellency’s eloquent address, particularly the Tamil part of it and we are sure that in the very near future Your Excellency would be able to deliver lovely Tamil speeches.

We wish to express our sincere gratitude to the Defense Secretary, Chief of Defence Staff and Head of Joint Operations Command, Chiefs of the three armed forces, Inspector General of Police and Director General of Civil Defense Force for having graced this memorable gathering by their presence.

We are also very grateful to all the diplomats whose presence really adds an additional dimension to this significant function.

We must mention our deep sense of gratitude to all the distinguished invitees who have, in spite of their personal busy agenda, given priority to this event.

We would like to place on record our heartfelt thanks to all the speakers including His Excellency the President and the two respected Ulama who graced this occasion by their Qira’at (recital) and Dua (supplication).

An event like this cannot happen overnight. The wheels started rolling weeks ago. It indeed required careful planning and hard work. We have been fortunate enough to be backed by a team of very motivated and dedicated professionals who know their job and are result-oriented.

We cannot forget the officials and staff of the Presidential Secretariat and Temple Trees without whose support this function would not have been a success. Our wholehearted thanks go to everyone of them.

My vote of thanks will not be complete without paying a special tribute to the media personnel who have given importance to cover this outstanding gathering.

We also wish to register our deep gratitude to the comperes who performed their job well.

Our special thanks go to the benevolent brothers who contributed to the Education Fund of Soldiers’ Children.

I cannot thank everyone enough for their involvement and their willingness to take on the completion of tasks beyond their comfort zones.

I might have failed to make mention of the names of people whose co-operation and support were obtained by us in order to make this event successful. Please bear with me and accept my sincere thanks and apologies for any shortcomings.

Last but not least, I would like to say thank you to everyone in general.

May Almighty Allah guide all of us in his right path!

Thank you.