{"id":25148,"date":"2018-12-11T18:23:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T18:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25148"},"modified":"2018-12-11T18:23:27","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T18:23:27","slug":"sri-lanka-deposed-pms-opponents-seek-to-bar-him-from-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25148","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka: Deposed PM’s opponents seek to bar him from parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sri Lanka’s deposed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is facing a lawsuit challenging his right to hold a seat in parliament amid a bitter power struggle that has driven the South Asian country progressively deeper into crisis.<\/p>\n

A petition filed at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday accused Wickremesinghe of doing business with Sri Lanka’s government, a claim if true, would disqualify him from parliament and dash his hopes of returning to the prime minister’s post.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The case against Wickremesinghe alleges he holds shares in a company that prints cheques for state-owned banks.<\/p>\n

It was filed by a supporter of the overthrown leader’s successor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been temporarily barred from acting as prime minister<\/a> by the Court of Appeal, leaving the country without a functioning government.<\/p>\n

The decision was made pending the court’s hearing of a petition brought by members of parliament on Rajapaksa’s refusal to step down despite losing two no-confidence motions in November.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka<\/a> has been in turmoil since October 26 when President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe<\/a> and replaced him with Rajapaksa, a former president accused of corruption and human rights abuses. But in the ensuing weeks,\u00a0Rajapaksa could not muster enough support in parliament, and Sirisena subsequently dissolved the 225-member House and called\u00a0for\u00a0snap elections to take place in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court, however, halted the president’s moves<\/a> amid a legal challenge<\/a>, allowing parliament to resume. The top court is due to deliver a verdict on the case later this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ajith Perera, a member of Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), told Al Jazeera the lawsuit against the overthrown leader was “filed out of desperation”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am sure the court will throw the case out,” he said. “They have filed this case to rattle us because they have lost so much face due to previous court decisions.”<\/p>\n

In 1999, the Court of Appeal stripped a Sri Lankan legislator of his seat after it found the politician was involved in a company supplying dental equipment to the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘People power campaign’<\/h2>\n

The lawsuit against Wickremesinghe, who insists his sacking was unconstitutional, came after he called for mass demonstrations to pressure Sirisena to reinstate him. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a statement on Monday, he said he commanded the support of parliament and Sirisena has until Friday to recognise that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wickremesinghe – who is confident of a top court ruling against Sirisena \u2013 said tens of thousands of the party faithful would rally in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, if the president did not heed the court’s decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

“After the court ruling, we will launch our ‘People Power’ campaign to force the president to end the crisis,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UNP is also expected to table a motion requesting a vote on Wickremesinghe’s support in parliament on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The party commands the support of 103 legislators in the 225-member House and expects the Tamil National Alliance, a coalition of 14 legislators who represent the country’s ethnic Tamil minority, to back the resolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sirisena has previously\u00a0refused to reinstate Wickremesinghe<\/a>. In November, he said:\u00a0“Even if the UNP has the majority, I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister … not in my lifetime.”<\/p>\n

The former allies had fallen out over economic policy, day-to-day administration, and what Sirisena said was the involvement of a Wickremesinghe ally in an alleged assassination plot against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the court of appeal’s decision on December 3 to temporarily bar Rajapaksa and his cabinet has left Sri Lanka without a government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the same day,\u00a0<\/span>Sirisena met with the top bureaucrats from government ministries and instructed them to “continue their duties and ensure there was no breakdown in public services”.<\/p>\n

He has held regular meetings with the civil servants since.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Major consequences’<\/h2>\n

Rajitha Keerthi Tennakoon, a Colombo-based political analyst, said the government’s suspension had “reduced the activities of the public sector tremendously”. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, “there has been no breakdown as of yet and there are no problems in obtaining public services such as health and education,” Tennakoon told Al Jazeera. <\/span><\/p>\n

“But this will have major consequences in the long term.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Chief among the concerns was the parliament’s failure to approve a budget for 2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wickremesinghe’s UNP in a post on Twitter on Tuesday said Sirisena’s refusal to “appoint a legitimate government” meant more than one million government servants will not receive salaries after January 1, 2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lakshman Silva, a 62-year-old former civil servant, told Al Jazeera he was “worried” about receiving his pension payment. <\/span><\/p>\n

The parliament’s failure to pass a budget means “I might not have an income from next year,” he said, adding: “I don’t have a lot of savings \u2026 so I am really worried about the next few months and I hope things will be sorted, I don’t care how.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The protracted crisis has also hit the country’s economy. The country’s currency fell to a record low of 177.20 to the dollar in November, and foreign investors pulled out more than 30bn rupees ($169.5m) since the crisis began.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The travel industry, which makes up about 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s $87bn economy, has also reported cancellations by both businesses and leisure visitors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rathindra Kuruwita contributed reporting from Colombo.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka’s deposed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is facing a lawsuit challenging his right to hold a seat in parliament amid a bitter power struggle that has driven the South Asian country progressively deeper into crisis. A petition filed at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday accused Wickremesinghe of doing business with Sri Lanka’s government,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25148","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\/25148","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=25148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}