{"id":21918,"date":"2018-11-15T10:23:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T10:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21918"},"modified":"2018-11-15T10:23:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T10:23:46","slug":"chaos-in-sri-lanka-parliament-as-mps-exchange-blows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21918","title":{"rendered":"Chaos in Sri Lanka parliament as MPs exchange blows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sri Lanka<\/a>‘s parliament descended into chaos with MPs swinging punches and throwing projectiles a day after legislators voted the prime minister out of office.<\/p>\n

Speaker of Parliament Karu Jayasuriya said the country had no government as parliament re-convened on Thursday, a day after the no-confidence vote<\/a> against newly appointed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The motion passed with the backing of 122 MPs in the 225-member legislature.<\/p>\n

Jayasuriya said there was no prime minister, neither Rajapaksa nor his rival whose ousting in late October started the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dozens of MPs fought and some who fell on the floor were kicked by rivals. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of Rajapaksa’s supporters threw water bottles and rubbish bins in the parliament. The Speaker then adjourned the proceedings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rajapaksa said the no-confidence vote should not have been a voice vote, calling for fresh elections.<\/span><\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena in a letter to the Speaker said he cannot accept the no-confidence vote as the Speaker appeared to have ignored the constitution, parliamentary procedure and traditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sirisena, who triggered the crisis by firing Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and naming Rajapaksa, a controversial former president, to the job late last month, dissolved parliament last week and ordered elections as a way to break the deadlock.<\/span><\/p>\n

Supreme Court overturns decree<\/span><\/h2>\n

However, the Supreme Court overturned<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that decree on Tuesday until it had heard petitions challenging the move as unconstitutional.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It is difficult to say who is in charge in Sri Lanka. Now we are left with a power vacuum,” Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Colombo, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The United States, European Union and other members of the international community have raised concerns over the crisis.<\/p>\n

Only China has recognised the appointment of Rajapaksa, who during his decade as president until 2015 relied heavily on Beijing for diplomatic and financial support.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka’s parliament descended into chaos with MPs swinging punches and throwing projectiles a day after legislators voted the prime minister out of office. Speaker of Parliament Karu Jayasuriya said the country had no government as parliament re-convened on Thursday, a day after the no-confidence vote against newly appointed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The motion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}