{"id":42220,"date":"2015-03-12T00:11:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T06:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42220"},"modified":"2015-03-11T17:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T00:10:24","slug":"ex-liberal-democrat-chamali-fernando-named-as-conservative-parliamentary-candidate-for-cambridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/12\/ex-liberal-democrat-chamali-fernando-named-as-conservative-parliamentary-candidate-for-cambridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Liberal Democrat Chamali Fernando named as Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cambridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

A barrister and Liberal Democrat defector has been named as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cambridge.
\nChamali Fernando, 35, was adopted by party members to fight the 2015 poll at a special general meeting.<\/p>\n

She joined the Tories in 2009, two years after she unsuccessfully sought the Liberal Democrat nomination for the London mayoral poll.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a case of second time lucky in Cambridge for Ms Fernando, who missed out on the nomination to run for MP as a Conservative last time around.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Chamali<\/a><\/div>\n

She was beaten by Nick Hillman, who came second in the 2010 general election.<\/p>\n

Ms Fernando, who is of Sri Lankan ancestry, said: I am delighted to be provided the opportunity to champion issues that matter to the people of Cambridge whilst ensuring politics becomes more relevant, welcoming and representative of society.<\/p>\n

The plan I will set out to achieve success for households, businesses and organisations of Cambridge is ambitious, bold and different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Fernando is a senior policy advisor to the campaign fighting for the creation of an international court for the environment, and as a barrister has dealt with people trafficking and honour killing cases.<\/p>\n

She describes herself as having an unyielding will to secure our borders\u201d and supports fast-track deportation of foreign nationals who incite racial hatred or terrorism.<\/p>\n

Her other policies include the checking of asylum seekers against international databases to keep terrorists out of the UK and the introduction of surprise Ofsted inspections for schools.<\/p>\n

Ms Fernando, who studied A-level politics in Cambridge and has campaigned for the Conservatives locally, said it would be an honour\u201d to serve as the city\u2019s MP.<\/p>\n

She added: Few cities in the world have the wealth of knowledge, expertise and dynamism that we are fortunate to hold at our fingertips. There are two great universities which demonstrate our potential \u2013 one is a national treasure and the other, a gateway to learning in an ever-changing global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local Tory chairman Nick Clarke hailed Ms Fernando as an excellent\u201d candidate.<\/p>\n

He said: At the last general election we came second and are now well placed to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert is seeking re-election while Labour\u2019s candidate is Daniel Zeichner.<\/p>\n

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

A barrister and Liberal Democrat defector has been named as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cambridge. Chamali Fernando, 35, was adopted by party members to fight the 2015 poll at a special general meeting. She joined the Tories in 2009, two years after she unsuccessfully sought the Liberal Democrat nomination for the London mayoral poll. […]<\/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-42220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42220","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=42220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}