{"id":40833,"date":"2015-01-13T07:06:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T14:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=40833"},"modified":"2015-01-13T07:06:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T14:06:25","slug":"rajapaksa-denies-post-election-coup-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/01\/13\/rajapaksa-denies-post-election-coup-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Rajapaksa Denies Post-Election Coup Bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hot News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
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Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa has denied government allegations that he attempted to remain in office after it became clear that he had lost last week’s election.<\/p>\n

In comments published on Twitter as Pope Francis landed on the island<\/a>, Rajapaksa insisted he had readily accepted “the people’s verdict” in what was his first reaction to last Thursday’s polls.<\/p>\n

Newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena’s top aides – Minister of Health Rajitha Senaratne and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera – have alleged that Rajapaksa had tried to use the military to prevent the election result from being released in order to continue in office despite the defeat.<\/p><\/div>\n

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But Rajapaksa wrote: “I deny in all possible terms reports of attempts to use the military to influence election results.<\/p>\n

“I accepted the outcome long before the final official results were released and congratulated the new president,” he said.<\/p>\n

The 69-year-old, who came to power in a 2005 presidential election, added that he had “always bowed down to the people’s verdict”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot News Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa has denied government allegations that he attempted to remain in office after it became clear that he had lost last week’s election. In comments published on Twitter as Pope Francis landed on the island, Rajapaksa insisted he had readily accepted “the people’s verdict” in what was his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40833","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=40833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}