{"id":81112,"date":"2018-09-17T16:02:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T23:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=81112"},"modified":"2018-09-17T16:02:47","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T23:02:47","slug":"sri-lanka-president-tells-diplomats-pick-up-phone-or-pack-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/09\/17\/sri-lanka-president-tells-diplomats-pick-up-phone-or-pack-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka president tells diplomats: pick up phone or pack up"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"articleIconLinksContainer\"><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"artSplitter mol-img-group\">\n<div>\n<h2 class=\"container-3zJLP vertical-2XJd5\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy\u00a0 Mail on line (UK)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Sri Lankan President Maithripala Maithripala Sirisena was criticised for the shock dismissal last week of his top envoy to Austria<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s president on Monday justified his decision to sack six diplomats &#8212; including an ambassador &#8212; for not answering his phone calls, saying more would follow if the foreign service did not shape up.<\/p>\n<p>Maithripala Sirisena was criticised for the shock dismissal last week of his top envoy to Austria and five other Vienna-based staff after his office tried unsuccessfully for hours to reach them by phone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am being attacked ferociously over social media for recalling the entire embassy staff. Yes, I did that to send a powerful message to other embassies,&#8221; Sirisena told a public meeting in Colombo.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-3d50cf2f4c9e5e4b\" class=\"blkBorder img-share b-loaded\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1\/2018\/09\/17\/15\/wire-4339150-1537194188-395_634x472.jpg\" alt=\"Sri Lankan President Maithripala Maithripala Sirisena was criticised for the shock dismissal last week of his top envoy to Austria\" width=\"634\" height=\"472\" \/><\/p>\n<p>He said he ordered the sacking of ambassador Priyanee Wijesekera and five other staff to set an example.<\/p>\n<p>Sirisena did not say why he needed to contact the embassy urgently, or why other avenues were not explored to reach the staffers.<\/p>\n<p>The Sri Lankan embassy in Austria is accredited to UN bodies in Vienna, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.<\/p>\n<p>It was the second time in days that Sirisena has raised eyebrows.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, he flew into a rage over nuts served aboard SriLankan Airlines, the island&#8217;s national carrier, saying they were unfit for animals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Returning from Kathmandu, I was served some cashews on board a SriLankan flight, but it was so bad even a dog wouldn&#8217;t eat it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>An airline spokesman said it had cleared its stock of cashews &#8212; only served in business class &#8212; and would change its Dubai-based supplier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy\u00a0 Mail on line (UK) Sri Lankan President Maithripala Maithripala Sirisena was criticised for the shock dismissal last week of his top envoy to Austria Sri Lanka&#8217;s president on Monday justified his decision to sack six diplomats &#8212; including an ambassador &#8212; for not answering his phone calls, saying more would follow if the foreign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-sirisena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81112","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=81112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}