Colombo, Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was appointed prime minister in a controversial move by President Maithripala Sirisena, on Sunday ended his five-decade-long association with the SLFP and joined the newly-formed Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP).<\/p>\n
Rajapaksa’s move signalled that he would contest the snap polls, to be held on January 5, under his own party banner and not that of Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).<\/p>\n
Mahinda Rajapaksa becomes new Prime Minister of Sri Lanka amid political drama<\/p>\n
The former president obtained the membership of the SLPP, launched by his supporters, on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
His father Don Alwin Rajapaksa was a founding member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which was formed in 1951.<\/p>\n
The SLPP was formed last year by Rajapaksa’s supporters to create a platform for his re-entry into politics. The party in February’s local council election won two-third of the total 340 seats.<\/p>\n
The 72-year-old strongman, who ruled Lanka for a decade from 2005, was unexpectedly defeated by his deputy, Sirisena, in the presidential election held in January 2015 with the support from Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP).<\/p>\n
Ousted Sri Lanka PM ready for polls as legal action planned<\/p>\n
However, the power-sharing arrangement between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe became increasingly tenuous on several policy matters, especially on economy and security.<\/p>\n
Finally, on October 26, Sirisena abruptly ousted Wickremesinghe and replaced him with Rajapaksa, after three-and-a-half years of an estranged relationship with him.<\/p>\n
The island nation plunged into a constitutional crisis following the move. Sirisena had suspended parliamentary proceedings until November 16. Later, owing to domestic and international pressure, he issued a notice to reconvene parliament on November 14.<\/p>\n
However, on Friday, Sirisena dissolved parliament and announced snap polls on January 5 next year after it became evident that he did not have enough support in the House to prove the premiership of Rajapaksa.<\/p>\n
Rajapaksa needed the support of minimum 113 parliamentarians in the 225-member House to prove his majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colombo, Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was appointed prime minister in a controversial move by President Maithripala Sirisena, on Sunday ended his five-decade-long association with the SLFP and joined the newly-formed Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP). Rajapaksa’s move signalled that he would contest the snap polls, to be held on January 5, under his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}