{"id":44643,"date":"2015-06-11T14:25:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T21:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=44643"},"modified":"2015-06-11T14:25:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T21:25:43","slug":"two-ex-pms-quit-rajapaksa-group-to-join-sirisena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/06\/11\/two-ex-pms-quit-rajapaksa-group-to-join-sirisena\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Ex-PMs Quit Rajapaksa Group To Join Sirisena"},"content":{"rendered":"

By P K Balachanran\u00a0Courtesy The New Indian Express<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

COLOMBO: Two former Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka, D.M. Jayaratne and Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, quit the Mahinda Rajapaksa faction in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and cast their lot with the faction led by Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. On Thursday, Sirisena appointed the defectors Special \u00a0Advisors (Political)\u201d.<\/p>\n

Both Jayaratne and Wickramanayake had signed the opposition\u2019s No Trust Motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who being Leader of the United National Party (UNP), is in conflict with a large section of the SLFP.<\/p>\n

The defections are expected to seriously impair the ability of the Rajapaksa faction in the SLFP and the umbrella organization United Peoples\u2018 Freedom Alliance (UPFA), to press for the No Trust Motion, although it had been signed by 122 of the 225 members of parliament.<\/p>\n

Cabinet spokesman, Rajitha Senaratne, told the media on Thursday, that 25 to 35 signatories have already regretted signing the motion. He also stated that the motion would not be taken up for debate until the 20 th.Constitutional Amendment (20A), embodying electoral reforms, is passed. The need of the hour is to pass the 20A and hold parliamentary elections by September as promised by President Sirisena.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, President Sirisena is reported to have told a group of UPFA members that he is not favor of the No confidence Motion against Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.<\/p>\n

Senaratne further said that changes to the 20A, as per suggestions submitted various parties, will be considered and a decision taken, at the next cabinet meeting on Friday.<\/p>\n

Constitutional Council<\/strong><\/p>\n

In another development on Wednesday, the ruling and opposition parties in parliament decided not to make an issue of appointments to the Constitutional Council (CC) which is meant to appoint the independent commissions including an Election Commission.<\/p>\n

Parliamentary endorsement is now assured for all the political and non-political appointees to the CC. However, it was decided that after the parliamentary elections, ministers appointed as representatives of the President and the Prime Minister in the CC will quit, and their places will not be given to any one from the Council of Ministers, to ensure impartiality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By P K Balachanran\u00a0Courtesy The New Indian Express COLOMBO: Two former Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka, D.M. Jayaratne and Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, quit the Mahinda Rajapaksa faction in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and cast their lot with the faction led by Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. On Thursday, Sirisena appointed the defectors Special \u00a0Advisors (Political)\u201d. […]<\/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-44643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44643","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=44643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}