{"id":46186,"date":"2015-07-26T05:33:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T12:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46186"},"modified":"2015-07-26T05:33:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T12:33:44","slug":"aftermath-of-january-8-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/07\/26\/aftermath-of-january-8-conspiracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Aftermath of January 8 Conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chandrapala Hitihamillage<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

In my previous article I highlighted the nature of the conspiracy. Post\u00a0January 8 election results appear to have confirmed the observations\u00a0made thereon without any doubt. As expected, Maithreepala Sirisena\u00a0became the president by a slender majority with minority Tamil, Moslem\u00a0and non-Buddhist votes. When Mahinda Rajapaksa retired to his\u00a0Madamulana residence after his defeat, he gave up his presidency of\u00a0SLFP as well to Maithreepala Sirisena.<\/p>\n

At the outset, the President had to\u00a0fulfill his obligations to his conspirators. Ignoring the Prime Minister who\u00a0is already at the parliament with a majority vote, he appointed Ranil\u00a0Widkremasinghe as the Prime Minister who did not command a majority\u00a0vote. One of it\u2019s kind in the entire political history of Sri Lanka. For this\u00a0purpose he used his position as the president of the SLFP and persuaded\u00a0some of the Ministers and MPs of the SLFP to join for a national\u00a0government for hundred days under Ranil Wickremasingle as the prime\u00a0minister. Most of the important ministries were given to the MPs of the\u00a0UNP.<\/p>\n

In spite of his repeated defeats, Western powers were able to keep\u00a0him as the head of the UNP as he was their most trusted and effective\u00a0representative. Immediately after assuming duties as the prime minster he\u00a0announced his budgetary proposals to hood wink the public. These\u00a0proposals included reduced fuel prices, higher guaranteed prices for some\u00a0products including paddy and some financial benefits to government\u00a0employees without considering in the least about their implications on\u00a0government expenditure. In consequence they were forced to borrow an\u00a0unprecedented amount from the domestic market by a treasury bond issue\u00a0in a controversial manner. Now this bond issue is accused as a downright\u00a0fraud. He also took measures to stop the activities of the Colombo Port\u00a0City Project funded by the Chinese \u00a0overnment and Uma Oya project\u00a0funded by Iran under the guise of environmental problems He used some\u00a0of his stooges for this purpose who gave wide publicity to certain make\u00a0shift environmental issues to mislead the public.<\/p>\n

Some of the other\u00a0projects in progress were also stopped. He unleashed his revenge on his\u00a0political opponents by accusing Rajapaksa family and others on false\u00a0charges of corruption and by dragging them on to the Financial Crimes\u00a0Investigation Division (FCID) appointed particularly for this purpose.\u00a0Sometimes they were led to other legal authorities such as the Criminal\u00a0Investigation Department, Bribery Commission etc. Chief Justice was\u00a0replaced even without allowing the existing CJ to resign.<\/p>\n

A former CJ\u00a0Shirani Bandaranayske who was found guilty on some charges was\u00a0exonerated and reinstated with full honours and made her retire on the\u00a0following day with full benefits of retirement.\u00a0The President was given a Royal Welcome for what he did, by\u00a0summoning his to the Buckingham Palace on the advise of the British\u00a0prime minister. American Secretary of State John Kerry himself came to\u00a0thank him personally after a long lapse. India arranged an immediate\u00a0welcome ceremony. Several measures were taken to relax security\u00a0arrangements in northern and eastern areas and by giving back some land\u00a0held by the armed forces for security reasons to appease Tamils and\u00a0Moslems..<\/p>\n

With the help of Chandrika Bandaranayaka Kumaratunga, the\u00a0President started to break the SLFP by appointing anti-Mahianda\u00a0Rajapaksa MPs like Arujuna Ranatunga as organizers of Strong SLFP\u00a0constituents like Attanagalla. But when Chandrika Kumaratunga started\u00a0campaigning for them with an eye on becoming the president of the SLFP\u00a0again she was booed out of the meetings by the people.<\/p>\n

By this time people were beginning to realize that they were\u00a0cheated and that all the accusations made against the Rajapaksa family\u00a0and others were false as none of them were proved beyond any\u00a0reasonable doubt. The conscience of people made them feel that they had\u00a0been very unreasonable to the former president who had done so much to\u00a0the country.<\/p>\n

Hence, they started flocking in large numbers to pay courtesy\u00a0calls on him. Other party leaders of the alliance Wimal Weerawansa,\u00a0Udaya Gammanpila, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Dinesh Gunawardena and\u00a0some members of the SLFP Bandula Goonewardena, Prasanna Ranatunga,\u00a0Kumara Welgama, Professor G.L.Pieris and several others startedcampaigning against the conspiracy and the dual role played by\u00a0Maithreepala Sirisena in trying to destroy the party. They wanted\u00a0Mahinda Rajapaksa back as their leader to contest the election for the\u00a0post of Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

When this was denied by Maithreepala Sirisena\u00a0as the president of SLFP all the other MPs rallied against him except a\u00a0few and he had no option but to oblige. The culmination of these events\u00a0forced him to make a statement to the nation. This statement let the cat\u00a0out of the bag and exposed his leading role in the conspiracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chandrapala Hitihamillage In my previous article I highlighted the nature of the conspiracy. Post\u00a0January 8 election results appear to have confirmed the observations\u00a0made thereon without any doubt. As expected, Maithreepala Sirisena\u00a0became the president by a slender majority with minority Tamil, Moslem\u00a0and non-Buddhist votes. When Mahinda Rajapaksa retired to his\u00a0Madamulana residence after his defeat, he gave […]<\/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-46186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46186","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=46186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}