Sri Lanka\u2019s ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Monday that he still commands the majority in parliament as the Speaker feared that there could be \u201cbloodshed\u201d on the streets amid the current political crisis.<\/p>\n
The political developments unfolded after President Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s broader political front United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance withdrew from the unity government with Wickremesinghe\u2019s United National Party. Sirisena on Friday night sacked Wickremesinghe and appointed former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new prime minister. Sirisena also suspended parliament till November 16 after Wickremesinghe sought an emergency session to prove his majority.<\/p>\n
Addressing the foreign journalists association, Wickremesinghe said, \u201cThe Speaker has the powers to summon parliament and he will decide tomorrow\u201d. Wickremesinghe said he commands majority in the House and it could be proved when parliament is reconvened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have majority in the House and now told the Speaker to summon parliament,\u201d he said referring to letters sent to Jayasuriya by the main Tamil party Tamil National Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. \u201cNo one can interfere with parliament,\u201d Wickremesinghe said.<\/p>\n
Sri Lankan parliament speaker Karu Jayasuriya warned that there could be bloodshed as some people were trying to resolve a power struggle between the president and his ousted premier on the streets. Addressing reporters in Kandy, Jayasuriya said the issue should be resolved inside parliament. \u201cSome are trying to settle this outside on the streets. If that is allowed there can be bloodshed, two people have died already, internationally the country will suffer damage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The crisis in Sri Lanka took a deadly turn on Sunday as one person was killed in violence at the headquarters of state oil company Ceylon Petroleum, where Arjuna Ranatunga, petroleum minister in the ousted cabinet, tried to re-enter his office. Police said one of Ranatunga\u2019s security guards opened fire. Mangala Samaraweera, the finance minister in the ousted government, the so called Rajapaksa government had been formed as a result of \u201ca coup\u201d. \u201cAll those accepting illegal positions in an unlawful government would be legally dealt with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Matthew Circosta, Analyst, Sovereign Risk Group, Moody\u2019s Investors Service said, \u201cThe current political crisis in Sri Lanka is credit negative for the sovereign.\u201d \u201cThe President\u2019s sudden appointment of Mr Rajapaksa as Prime Minister significantly heightens policy uncertainty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sri Lanka\u2019s ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Monday that he still commands the majority in parliament as the Speaker feared that there could be \u201cbloodshed\u201d on the streets amid the current political crisis. The political developments unfolded after President Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s broader political front United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance withdrew from the unity government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45838,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45836\/revisions\/45838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}