{"id":125142,"date":"2022-05-10T13:48:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T20:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=125142"},"modified":"2022-05-10T13:48:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T20:48:18","slug":"we-will-not-leave-the-country-namal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/05\/10\/we-will-not-leave-the-country-namal\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We will not leave the country\u2019 &#8211; Namal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s Mahinda Rajapaksa &#8212; who resigned as prime minister after his supporters attacked anti-government protesters and sparked a day of violence &#8212; will not flee the country, his son MP Namal Rajapaksa told AFP on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said the Rajapaksa family had no plans to leave Sri Lanka despite weeks of protests demanding they relinquish power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a lot of rumours that we are going to leave. We will not leave the country,\u201d he said, describing the surge of national anger against his family as a bad patch\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He added that Mahinda Rajapaksa would not step down as a lawmaker and wanted to play an active role in choosing his successor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former prime minister was taken to an undisclosed location after protesters on Monday night breached the compound fence at Temple Trees, his official residence in the capital Colombo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My father is safe, he is at a safe location and he is communicating with the family,\u201d the former sports minister was quoted as saying by AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Weeks of overwhelmingly peaceful protests against the government\u2019s mismanagement of the crisis turned violent on Monday when supporters of Mahinda Rajapaksa had attacked demonstrators outside Temple Trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anti-government crowds defied a nationwide curfew to retaliate against government supporters for the attacks late into the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Namal said his family believed that Sri Lankans had a right to protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We will always stand by our people,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: AFP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Sri Lanka\u2019s Mahinda Rajapaksa &#8212; who resigned as prime minister after his supporters attacked anti-government protesters and sparked a day of violence &#8212; will not flee the country, his son MP Namal Rajapaksa told AFP on Tuesday. He said the Rajapaksa family had no plans to leave Sri Lanka despite weeks of protests [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125142","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=125142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}