{"id":22110,"date":"2018-11-16T15:24:53","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T15:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22110"},"modified":"2018-11-16T15:24:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T15:24:53","slug":"chilli-paste-books-and-chairs-thrown-in-sri-lanka-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22110","title":{"rendered":"Chilli paste, books and chairs thrown in Sri Lanka parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sri Lanka<\/a>‘s parliament has descended into chaos for a second day as legislators supporting disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/a> threw books, furniture and chili paste at rivals in a bid to block a second no-confidence motion.<\/p>\n

The pandemonium began when Rajapaksa’s supporters poured on to the floor of parliament on Friday and prevented Speaker Karu Jayasuriya from taking his chair for more than an hour. <\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, Jayasuriya entered the red-carpeted chamber protected by dozens of unarmed officers and parliamentary staff. Rioting legislators then took away the ceremonial chair, but staff carried in an ordinary office chair as a makeshift replacement. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, rioters grabbed that chair too, breaking it into pieces that were then used as projectiles to attack rivals and police.<\/span><\/p>\n

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WATCH:<\/strong> Chaos in Sri Lanka parliament as MPs exchange blows (1:53)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The police held boards around the speaker to protect him from being hit by angry Rajapaksa supporters as he conducted a voice vote on a revised no-confidence motion against the disputed prime minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the motion passed, Jayasuriya adjourned the house until Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rajapakse lost<\/a> a similar vote on Wednesday, when 122 legislators in the 225-member House passed a no-trust motion against him in a voice vote, followed by a signed document.<\/p>\n

However, Rajapaksa refused to step down saying that motion should not have been put to a voice vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has been paralysed since October 26 when President Maithripala Sirisena appointed Rajapaksa, a controversial former president accused of corruption and grave human rights abuses, as prime minister after sacking Ranil Wickremesinghe.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Unprecedented scenes’<\/span><\/h2>\n

On Thursday, Sirisena held an emergency meeting with the leaders of the opposition parties that voted for the first no-confidence motion against Rajapaksa and asked them to take up the motion again and allow it to be debated and then put to a roll-call vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Opposition lawmaker R. Sampathan said it was Rajapaksa loyalists who prevented a roll-call vote on the motion as requested by Sirisena. <\/span><\/p>\n

Rajapakse himself stayed away from the rioting and walked out of the chamber after the vote.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A former parliament staffer said Friday’s scenes were unprecedented.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

“We haven’t had a situation where the speaker was prevented from entering the chamber,” former sergeant-at-arms Wijaya Palliyaguruge told the AFP news agency. <\/span><\/p>\n

“This is also the first time that the speaker had to come in with police protection.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A Rajapakse loyalist was seen throwing chilli powder at rival legislators and police. Several constables and legislators were taken to the parliament’s medical centre for first aid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gamini Jayawickrema Perera, a legislator from ousted prime minister Wickremesinghe’s party, said he was among those treated after chilli mixed with water was thrown at his face. <\/span><\/p>\n

Vijitha Herath, another legislator, said he suffered a forehead injury when a rival hit him with a hard-cover copy of the constitution that was on the speaker’s table.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Rajapakse’s spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella denied they attacked police or staff, but blamed the speaker for the chaos.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

“He (the speaker) need not have rushed the vote,” Rambukwella told reporters in parliament after sittings were adjourned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at a press conference after the vote, Wickremesinghe demanded the restoration of the status quo prior to October 26.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Let the status quo come back,” he told reporters. “The country needs stability.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He said he was ready to work with Sirisena despite their bitter differences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sirisena responded to Friday’s raucous scenes in a Twitter post, saying he would not dissolve parliament. He called upon “all parties to uphold principles of democracy and parliamentary traditions at all times”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sirisena had dissolved parliament last week and ordered elections to break the deadlock. But the Supreme Court ordered a suspension<\/a> of that decree on Tuesday until it had heard petitions challenging the move as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka’s parliament has descended into chaos for a second day as legislators supporting disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa threw books, furniture and chili paste at rivals in a bid to block a second no-confidence motion. The pandemonium began when Rajapaksa’s supporters poured on to the floor of parliament on Friday and prevented Speaker Karu…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22110","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\/22110","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=22110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}