{"id":26234,"date":"2018-12-20T09:22:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T09:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26234"},"modified":"2018-12-20T09:22:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T09:22:24","slug":"sri-lankan-president-appoints-cabinet-after-political-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26234","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan president appoints cabinet after political crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"86.8867028494\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena appointed a 30-member cabinet, days after Ranil Wickremesinghe was reinstated as prime minister following a lengthy political crisis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Sirisena administered oaths in a private event on Thursday. Mangala Samaraweera was reappointed as finance minister as parliament considers a temporary budget aimed at avoiding a government shut down from January 1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Wickremesinghe&#8217;s reinstatement as prime minister earlier this week and the appointment of a new cabinet will result in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/sri-lanka.html\">Sri Lanka<\/a>&#8216;s\u00a0government resuming functions that have been obstructed since October.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But continued acrimony between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe means the crisis is far from over.<\/p>\n<p>The crisis began when Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe and appointed former strongman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/mahinda-rajapaksa.html\">Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/a> in his place.<\/p>\n<p>Wickremesinghe insisted he was sacked illegally, while Rajapaksa failed to secure majority support in parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Sirisena dissolved parliament and called for elections. The Supreme Court declared the actions illegal, forcing the president to reappoint Wickremesinghe.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/sri-lanka.html\">Sri Lanka<\/a> had been braced for a government shutdown as parliament failed to approve spending for 2019, and rating agencies downgraded the country&#8217;s credit rating amid fears of a sovereign debt default.<\/p>\n<p>Sirisena came to power in 2015 on a pledge to uphold democracy and stamp out corruption. However, his popularity has been hit by the crisis triggered by Wickremesinghe&#8217;s sacking.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena appointed a 30-member cabinet, days after Ranil Wickremesinghe was reinstated as prime minister following a lengthy political crisis. Sirisena administered oaths in a private event on Thursday. Mangala Samaraweera was reappointed as finance minister as parliament considers a temporary budget aimed at avoiding a government shut down from January 1.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26234","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\/26234","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=26234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}