By Saman Indrajith Courtesy The Island

Sajith Premadasa

Sacking of Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe will go down in history as an instance where a President who does not have a direct mandate from the people removed a minister who had got elected to Parliament, Opposition and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa told Parliament yesterday.

Raising a privilege issue, Premadasa said that the incumbent President had entered Parliament through the National List and the latter had been able to obtain only 30,000 votes contesting from the UNP from Colombo District. Preferential votes for him were not even counted. Roshan Ranasinghe contested the same election from the Polonnaruwa District and obtained 90,615 preferential votes. So, this is the first time a president without a popular mandate has sacked a minister with a mandate from the people,” Premadasa said.

This President was appointed by 134 MPs. He is today being handled by an invisible hand. Today, all 225 MPs are under the jackboot of dictatorship.

The sacking of Minister Ranasinghe is a warning to the Prime Minister and other ministers in the Cabinet. They will be safe as long as they do not protest against corruption and the theft of public funds.

Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena said that the Cabinet of Ministers must respect discipline. There are many previous instances where ministers were removed. Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali were stalwart leaders of the UNP. They were stripped of their ministerial posts by former President Ranasinghe Premadasa. We must uphold parliamentary democracy. In order to that there has to be respect for fundamentals of democracy,” the Premier said.