CABINET SPOKESMAN SAYS THE NEWLY APPOINTED RESHUFFLED GOVERNMENT MINISTERS WOULD ONLY RECEIVE PAY OF MP’S

By Walter Jayawardhana

The newly sworn in cabinet , non-cabinet and deputy ministers would not receive bigger pay packets because of their ministerial portfolios.Cabinet spokesman and Media Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said the newly sworn in Sri Lankan cabinet with crossed over United National Party (UNP) and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) would not take Ministerial salaries but receive only salaries as ordinary parliamentarians.

He was speaking after 19 UNP parliamentarians and 6 SLMC parliamentarians joined the government. The teams were led by UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya and SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem.

Yapa said the newly recruited parliamentarians would work to implement the policies of ‘Mahinda Chintanaya’, the manifesto that received a mandate from the electorate during the last Presidential elections.

He said that the minority government now enjoys the strength of 113 parliamentarians in the parliament and with the added strength of the other parliamentarians who have endorsed the Mahinda Chintanaya , namely the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) the strength is 159 members in the parliament.

He said if the government sought a general election before the life of the parliament was over in search of a majority, for the election office itself it would have cost two billion rupees , that would have become a burden on the economy of the country.

With the new arrivals of the UNP parliamentarians, the total number of UNP members now in the government is amounting to 40. Some others joined President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government before this mass cross over.

All of them decided to leave the UNP mostly because the most serious crisis created in the party: the rebellion against its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe who refuses to leave the leadership after 14 electoral defeats of the party. UNP has been governing the country alternatively and it also led the country to independence from Britain 59 years ago. When the cross over happened , without tackling the problem the party leader is accused of being in Nepal and India.

The new party chairman Rukman Senanayaka in a last minute attempt tried to avert the crisis by proposing in a secret meeting with President Rajapaksa not to take the dissidents into the government but to take the whole party in to the government and form a national government. But President Rajapaksa reportedly told Rukman that he trusted the UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya rather than the leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

One of the surprise entries to the cabinet was the Southern member of parliament, Mahinda Wijesekera , whose electoral rival is Ports and Aviation Minister Mangala Samaraweera. Samaraweera reportedly protested Wijesekera’s entry into the government but the President assured Wijesekera that he would be given a place to work for the country.

Wijesekera said he was a man who entered politics through radical left and later was in the Sri Lanka Freedom party before joining the rightwing UNP. “But the President has personally assured me that I would be given a chance to help make the social change that I have been struggling to make all my life under his leadership,” Wijesekera said just after taking oaths.

A senior Vice President who crossed over, R. M. Dharmadasa Banda said they would see that the Memorandum of Understanding already signed between the UNP and the SLFP and policies even beyond that that would benefit the country would be implemented.

While UNP seniors were given cabinet positions the younger leaders like Hemakumara Nanayakkara, Naveen Dissanayaka and Neomal Perera were given non-cabinet ministries in the reshuffle.Karu Jayasuriya, P.Dayaratne, R.M.Dharmadasa banda, M.H. Mohamed, Gamini Lokuge, G. L. Peiris, Bandula Gunawardena, Rajitha Senaratne, Mahinda Wijesekera and Milinda Moragoda were senior leaders of the UNP who were made cabinet ministers.

Milinda Moragoda was a very close political ally of the party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and his departure exhibited the size of the crisis the leadership has caused in the party analysts said. But Ranil Wickremesinghe remains stubborn and refuses to leave the leadership. Meanwhile the membership can do little about it since the current party constitution empowers him with arbitrary powers.