{"id":82569,"date":"2018-10-31T00:42:43","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T06:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=82569"},"modified":"2018-10-30T16:05:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:05:16","slug":"prez-can-dissolve-parliament-if-vote-on-account-is-defeated-wijeyadasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/10\/31\/prez-can-dissolve-parliament-if-vote-on-account-is-defeated-wijeyadasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Prez can dissolve parliament if vote on account is defeated &#8211; Wijeyadasa"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who defected from the UNP to the UPFA on Monday, told the media in Colombo, yesterday, that if the vote on accounted to be presented by the new government to Parliament was defeated by any chance, the President was constitutionally empowered to dissolve Parliament immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Minister Rajapakshe, State Minister of Plantation Industries Vadivel Suresh and Deputy Minister of Wildlife and Tourism, Ananda Aluthgamage claimed they had acted out of principle in switching their allegiance to President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapakshe said that he had left the UNP mainly because the Wickremesinghe administration had leased out Hambantota Port to a Chinese company without a proper appraisal, the bond scams, deplorable move to hand over the East Container Terminal of the Colombo Port to India without presidential or Cabinet approval, the new land laws, government action in Geneva and the despicable manner in which laws governing the local and provincial government elections had been made.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.island.lk\/modules\/modPublication\/article_title_images\/1936236488prez.jpg\" alt=\"article_image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Vadivel Suresh said that he was disappointed with Wickremesinghe&#8217;s treatment of estate workers. &#8220;I asked the former PM to intervene on behalf of the estate workers to increase their wage to Rs 1,000 a day. But he ignored me. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Sirisena agreed to consider our request.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Minister Aluthgamage said that he was angry about the manner in which a cabal loyal to Ranil Wickremesinghe had run the government. &#8220;No attention was paid to the grassroots,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapakshe said that President Sirisena had appointed Wickremesinghe Prime Minister in 2015, when the UNP only had 47 MPs. &#8220;Therefore, the President had a right to appoint Rajapaksa who has the support of a lot more MPs. The Sinhala version of the 19th Amendment clearly states that if the Cabinet is dissolved, the PM can no longer hold his position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Rajapaksa also said that the Speaker could not summon Parliament once the President prorogued it and that the Speaker had only requested the President to summon Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I voted against the previous no-confidence motion against Wickremesinghe because at that time the Joint Opposition did not provide an alternative candidate as Prime Minister and I didn&#8217;t want to support a move which had the potential to cause instability in the country. When Wickremesinghe asked me about the NCM, I told him in no uncertain terms that I would vote against it not because I liked him but because I did not want the country to be plunged into chaos and it would take months for us to find a new PM at the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Island Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who defected from the UNP to the UPFA on Monday, told the media in Colombo, yesterday, that if the vote on accounted to be presented by the new government to Parliament was defeated by any chance, the President was constitutionally empowered to dissolve [&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-82569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82569","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=82569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}