Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse yesterday denied government allegations that he attempted a coup to remain in office after it became clear that he had lost last week’s election.
In comments published on Twitter as Pope Francis landed on the island, Rajapakse insisted that he had readily accepted “the people’s verdict” in what was his first reaction to the polls on Thursday.
Top aides of new Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena have alleged that the veteran strongman tried to cling to power in the early hours of Friday by urging the nation’s army and police chiefs to deploy the security forces.
However, Rajapakse wrote: “I deny in all possible terms reports of attempts to use the military to influence election results.”
“I accepted the outcome long before the final official results were released and congratulated the new president,” he said.
The 69-year-old, who came to power in a 2005 presidential election, added that he had “always bowed down to the people’s verdict.”
Sirisena’s new administration has pledged to make an investigation into what it has called “the coup and conspiracy” one of its top priorities.
Although the military has not confirmed an approach from Rajapakse’s camp in the hours before the final results were announced, Sirisena’s top lieutenants have said there was clear evidence of a conspiracy.
Rajapakse, who had been South Asia’s longest-serving leader, had initially been widely praised for conceding defeat to Sirisena before the final results were announced.
However, newly appointed Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera said “it was anything but” a peaceful transition.
“He stepped down only when the army chief and the police inspector general refused to go along with him,” Samaraweera said over the weekend.
Rajapakse has been accused of presiding over large-scale human rights abuses, including allegations of mass civilian casualties at the end of Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatist war.
While Sirisena’s camp have said that the army and police chiefs resisted the pressure from Rajapakse, leading lawyers have accused Sri Lankan Chief Justice Mohan Peiris of being party to a plot.
Lawyers have been demanding the resignation of Peiris, a former adviser to Rajapakse who was appointed chief justice after the controversial impeachment of his predecessor Shirani Bandaranayake in January 2013.
Speaking on a visit to regional powerhouse India on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters he had impressed “the importance of maintaining a peaceful process no matter what” when he spoke by telephone to Rajapakse last week.
While Kerry hailed the “peaceful change of power” in a nation devastated by the 37-year ethnic conflict, he also warned that “there are still real challenges in Sri Lanka.”
Kerry had earlier publicly voiced appreciation for Rajapakse’s early concession of election defeat before the coup allegations emerged.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS