{"id":70321,"date":"2017-10-04T15:59:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T22:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70321"},"modified":"2017-10-04T15:59:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T22:59:58","slug":"sri-lanka-opposition-party-to-protest-airport-deal-to-indian-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/04\/sri-lanka-opposition-party-to-protest-airport-deal-to-indian-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka opposition party to protest airport deal to Indian company"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By\u00a0PTI\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>COLOMBO:\u00a0Sri Lanka&#8217;s main opposition party, mostly comprising loyalists of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, said today it will stage a protest against the proposed lease of an airport to an Indian company.<\/p>\n<p>The Joint Opposition, a political alliance formed by a right-wing faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and several left-wing parties, said they will protest on Friday against the proposed 40-year lease to an Indian company of the Mattala Mahinda Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA), located in the Mattala town, 18 km from Hambantota.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will go to Mattala on October 6 to protest against the deal. We are opposed to selling of state assets by this government,&#8221; Dullas Alahapperuma, a Joint Opposition parliamentarian told reporters here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We tell the government to stop selling state assets. We will protest against the government in the language they understand,&#8221; Alahappruma said.<\/p>\n<p>In mid August, a Cabinet paper presented by Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva approved the lease of the MRIA to an Indian company for 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We stress that the government should not allow our country to be a battle ground of super powers,&#8221; Alahapperuma said.<\/p>\n<p>An Indian company had made a bid to develop the MRIA, which was built by the Rajapaksa government under massive borrowings from China.<\/p>\n<p>MRIA built at a cost of USD 209 million has been dubbed the world&#8217;s emptiest international airport due to the fewest number of flights operating from it.<\/p>\n<p>Leasing out MRIA to India comes in the wake of a similar deal to hand over an adjoining sea port at Hambantota to a Chinese company for 99 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0PTI\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0 COLOMBO:\u00a0Sri Lanka&#8217;s main opposition party, mostly comprising loyalists of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, said today it will stage a protest against the proposed lease of an airport to an Indian company. The Joint Opposition, a political alliance formed by a right-wing faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and several left-wing parties, said [&hellip;]<\/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-70321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70321","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=70321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}