Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Friday dissolved Parliament and called for fresh elections amid a deepening political crisis.
The government printer published a notification signed by Sirisena announcing the dissolution of Parliament effective at midnight on Friday.
The notice says that the names of candidates for new elections would be called before Nov. 26, and that the election would be held on Jan. 5. The new Parliament is to be convened on Jan. 17.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Sri Lanka has been in a political crisis since Oct. 26, when Sirisena fired his prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Wickremesinghe has said his firing was unconstitutional and refused to vacate his official residence, demanding that Parliament be immediately summoned to prove that he has support among its members.
Sirisena had suspended Parliament for two weeks in a move that Wickremesinghe’s backers have said was designed to buy time to shore up support.
There were calls locally and internationally to convene Parliament to end the impasse.
Amid the pressure, Sirisena announced that Parliament would be summoned on Nov.14. He maintained that his choice for prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had a majority in Parliament.
However, the decision to dissolve Parliament is a sign that this is not so, observers say.
“The dissolution clearly indicates that Mr Sirisena has grossly misjudged and miscalculated the support that he might or could secure to demonstrate support in the Parliament,” said Bharath Gopalaswamy, director at the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, a New Delhi-based analyst group.
“At the end of the day, he is a victim of his own homegrown crisis,” Gopalaswamy said.
Wickremesinghe’s camp is likely to contest Sirisena’s move because of constitutional provisions stating that a parliament cannot be dissolved until four-and-a-half years after its inception. The current Parliament was elected in August 2015.
“It’s totally unconstitutional,” said Harsha de Silva, a member of Wickremesinghe’s United National Party and a former minister.
“Sirisena has relegated the constitution to toilet paper. We will fight this dictator to the end,” De Silva added.
The party said on Twitter that it would meet with the elections commissioner to discuss the constitutionality of Sirisena’s move.
Earlier, US Representative Eliot Engel, the top-ranking Democrat on the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and two other lawmakers wrote to Sirisena expressing grave concern over the country’s political developments.
They said actions circumventing the democratic process could affect US assistance — including a planned five-year aid package worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We fear that recent actions, if not corrected, will threaten your country’s democratic development and derail the progress made in recent years,” the three lawmakers said in a letter.
Hours before the dissolution, Rajapaksa indicated in a speech what was coming, saying that the government must go to the people for confirmation on whether Sirisena made the correct decision when he appointed him as prime minister.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS