{"id":72480,"date":"2017-12-05T14:09:41","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T21:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=72480"},"modified":"2017-12-05T14:09:41","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T21:09:41","slug":"sri-lanka-mahinda-rajapaksa-blames-president-for-breakdown-of-party-unity-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/05\/sri-lanka-mahinda-rajapaksa-blames-president-for-breakdown-of-party-unity-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka: Mahinda Rajapaksa blames president for breakdown of party unity talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy livemint.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Ex-Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who leads a rival faction of the ruling SLFP, has blamed his successor, Maithripala Sirisena, for the breakdown of unity talks between the sides<\/p>\n<p><b>Colombo:<\/b>\u00a0Former Sri Lankan leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, who leads a rival faction of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), has blamed his successor\u2014President Maithripala Sirisena\u2014for the breakdown of unity talks between the two sides.<\/p>\n<p>The two factions of the SLFP have held talks to try and unite to contest local council elections, now likely to be held in mid-February. The efforts failed because they (the Sirisena faction) did not want to leave the government. We cannot agree to any alliance with the UNP,\u201d Rajapaksa said on Monday, addressing a political rally of his new party\u2014Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP)\u2014in the central hill town of Badulla.<\/p>\n<p>The SLPP is the brainchild of his powerful brother Basil, who was the economic development minister during Rajapaksa\u2019s 10-year presidency. Rajapaksa had been reluctant to publicly associate with SLPP until Monday. Rajapaksa backers in the SLPP want the Sirisena-led SLFP to leave the current unity government with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2019s United National Party (UNP).<\/p>\n<p>The UNP and SLFP formed the unity government in 2015 after Rajapaksa lost to Sirisena in the presidential election. Rajapaksa, who had sacked Sirisena from the party after he emerged as the common opposition challenger, had passed on the SLFP leadership to the incumbent president following his stunning victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy livemint.com Ex-Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who leads a rival faction of the ruling SLFP, has blamed his successor, Maithripala Sirisena, for the breakdown of unity talks between the sides Colombo:\u00a0Former Sri Lankan leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, who leads a rival faction of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), has blamed his successor\u2014President Maithripala [&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-72480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72480","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=72480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}