{"id":101900,"date":"2020-05-03T15:22:29","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T22:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101900"},"modified":"2020-05-03T15:22:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T22:22:29","slug":"politicking-in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/05\/03\/politicking-in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicking in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEDIA RELEASE Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/strong> Prime Minister<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The President, the government, and the state apparatus have focused their entire attention on combating Covid-19. The way in which the people have benefited from this is clearly apparent. Even in the midst of this national crisis and global disaster we see the unpleasant sight of the political opposition in this country vociferously demanding that the dissolved Parliament be reconvened and asserting that after the 30th of April, the President has no legal right to allocate funds for the maintenance of government services without the approval of the old parliament. They have even issued a threat to the effect that unless Parliament is reconvened, the President and all of us in the government-run the risk of the loss of our civic rights and the confiscation of our property. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parliament was dissolved at the beginning of March when there were no Coronavirus patients in the country. After the first Coronavirus patient was found one and a half weeks later, the Elections Commission postponed the election till the 20th of June. The Elections Commission has already announced that the election could be postponed further depending on the advice of the medical authorities. The Elections Commission will hold the election at a suitable time in accordance with the powers vested in them. The opposition\u2019s concern obviously is that if the election is held in a situation where the anti-Coronavirus campaign in Sri Lanka has shown much better results than in most other countries, they would be placed at a serious disadvantage. Hence we see that the opposition\u2019s present efforts are aimed at getting the old Parliament reconvened and using their majority in Parliament to block government finances, thereby sabotaging the anti-Coronavirus campaign in order to bring the government into disrepute before the election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in February, when there was no Coronavirus threat in the country, the opposition used their majority in Parliament to block payments to government suppliers of medicine and fertilizer so as to bring the new government into disrepute by creating a shortage of fertilizer and medicine in the country. The opposition argues that Article 150(3) of the Constitution allows the President to allocate funds for the running of government services at a time when Parliament has been dissolved only if the previous Parliament had not passed an Appropriation Act. They claim that the previous government had passed a Vote on Account up to the 30th of April and that therefore, after this date, the President has no authority to allocate funds for any purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an absurd argument. Under Article\n150(3) of the Constitution, the President has complete authority to allocate\nfunds for any purpose for which funds had not been allocated by Parliament. It\ngoes without saying that if Parliament has already allocated funds for a given\npurpose, there is no need for the President to intervene in the matter. The\nopposition also alleges that the President is not reconvening Parliament with\nthe ulterior motive of misusing the funds coming in from abroad for the\nanti-Coronavirus campaign. They contend that Parliament should be reconvened to\nsupervise how that money is spent. All funds received by the government go to\nthe Treasury via the Central Bank system. There are procedures that have to be\nfollowed in spending this money. Funds in the Treasury cannot be spent in the\nmanner that yahapalana ministers spent the money of the Central Cultural Fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the new Parliament convenes. the\nopposition will have the opportunity to raise questions about how government\nmoney was spent between the time of the dissolution of the old Parliament and\nthe convening of the new Parliament. Until then they should refrain from misleading\nthe public with blatant lies. At this moment, we should set politics aside and\nconcentrate on controlling the Coronavirus outbreak and restoring normalcy to\nthe lives of the people. We all saw the magnitude of the Coronavirus cluster\nthat had formed among Navy personnel due to their involvement in the\nanti-Coronavirus campaign. I wish them all a speedy recovery. This highlights\nthe personal risks taken in the service of the people by our health sector\nworkers, and Army, Navy, Air Force, and Police personnel at the forefront of\nthe battle against the Coronavirus pandemic. I call upon all members of the\npublic to extend their fullest cooperation to these heroic individuals to\nenable them to fulfill their duties effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/strong>\n\nPrime Minister\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEDIA RELEASE Mahinda Rajapaksa Prime Minister The President, the government, and the state apparatus have focused their entire attention on combating Covid-19. The way in which the people have benefited from this is clearly apparent. Even in the midst of this national crisis and global disaster we see the unpleasant sight of the political opposition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mahinda-rajapaksa","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}