{"id":66056,"date":"2017-05-12T14:09:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T21:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=66056"},"modified":"2017-05-12T14:09:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T21:09:15","slug":"supreme-court-suspends-appeal-courts-judgment-on-geethas-mp-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/05\/12\/supreme-court-suspends-appeal-courts-judgment-on-geethas-mp-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court suspends Appeal Court\u2019s judgment on Geetha\u2019s MP seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"video-text\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.adaderana.lk\/authors\/10\/roosindu-peris\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Roosindu Peris<\/a>\u00a0Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"newsContent\">\n<p>The Supreme Court has suspended the Appeal Court\u2019s judgment regarding MP Geetha Kumarasinghe\u2019s eligibility to hold a seat in parliament, till the 15 of May.<\/p>\n<p>The Appeal Court has put forward the fact that Kumarasighe\u2019s MP position violates a clause in the country\u2019s constitution which states that dual citizenship holders will not be allowed to hold position in Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile the Elections Commission has unanimously decided not to fill the seat left vacant in Parliament, until the Supreme Court\u2019s verdict is announced.<\/p>\n<p>The Court of Appeal had disqualified UPFA Galle District MP Geetha Kumarasinghe from holding a seat in Parliament due to her dual citizenship status, on May 3.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Supreme Court suspends Appeal Court&#039;s judgment on Geetha&#039;s MP seat (English)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xApXjiKm78g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A petition was presented in March 2015 by four individuals from Galle challenging Kumarasinghe\u2019s election to Parliament from the district at the last general election, due to her holding citizenship in Sri Lanka and Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p>The verdict was delivered on the 3 of May by Judge Preethi Padman Surasena with agreement of the President of the Court of Appeal Vijith K. Malalgoda.<\/p>\n<p>On March 14, the Attorney General had informed the Court of Appeal that Kumarasinghe cannot continue to serve as a Member of Parliament (MP) as she has failed to revoke her citizenship in Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p>According to section 20 of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, Article 91(1)(d)(xiii), a citizen of Sri Lanka who is also a citizen of any other country shall not be qualified to be elected as a Member of Parliament or to sit and vote in Parliament.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Roosindu Peris\u00a0Courtesy Adaderana The Supreme Court has suspended the Appeal Court\u2019s judgment regarding MP Geetha Kumarasinghe\u2019s eligibility to hold a seat in parliament, till the 15 of May. The Appeal Court has put forward the fact that Kumarasighe\u2019s MP position violates a clause in the country\u2019s constitution which states that dual citizenship holders will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66056","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=66056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}