{"id":82690,"date":"2018-11-01T22:24:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T04:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=82690"},"modified":"2018-11-01T15:18:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T22:18:11","slug":"how-come-mahinda-rajapakse-is-prime-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/01\/how-come-mahinda-rajapakse-is-prime-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"How come \u00a0Mahinda Rajapakse is\u00a0 Prime Minister\u00a0 ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Charles S Perera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

It is so confusing reading the Constitution with Articles, 42,44,46,48 with\u00a0 sub-articles\u00a0 1,2 etc. Therefore of all the numbers let us take only the number 19 and try to understand what happened on the 26 October, 2018.<\/p>\n

According to number 19\u00a0 Sri Lanka cannot have more than 30 Ministers in a National \u00a0Cabinet, unless two or more \u00a0political parties agreed to unite to form one National Government.<\/p>\n

In August,2015 in terms of number 19, the \u00a0Yahapalanaya Government\u00a0 was set up as a National Coalition government with the UNF and UPFA signing an agreement to form a coalition.\u00a0 They could therefore under number 19, have a Cabinet of more than 30 Ministers, Thus\u00a0 they had a Yahapalanaya government with\u00a0 a Cabinet of 40 Ministers.<\/p>\n

Hence the rule was the Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe could function in that office\u00a0 as the Prime Minister of the Coalition as long as the coalition lasts.<\/p>\n

But on the 26th<\/sup> October,2018 the situation changed with the UPFA the other partner to the Coalition \u00a0of the Yahapalanaya Government sent a letter to the Speaker to say that they have left the Yahapalanaya Government\u00a0 as its Coalition Partner.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the Coalition government was left \u00a0with only one party to it, \u00a0with the Cabinet of Ministers reduced by that number that left the Coalition. Hence\u00a0 the Yahapalanaya did not exist anymore as a coalition. In that changed situation under the\u00a0 now famous number 19, \u00a0Ranil Wickrmasinghe\u00a0 lost his office as the Prime Minister and the government became\u201d desolved.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the President Maithripala Sirisena taking into account the changed\u00a0 situation vis \u00e0 vis the\u00a0 Yahapalnaya government, finding the country without a Prime Minister and therefore a government , called upon Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse MP from Kurunagala ,\u00a0 who in his opinion is able to have the confidence of the Members of the Parliament to form a Government under number 19,\u00a0 and swore him in as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka replacing Ranil Wickramasinghe who was disposed of from that office under the same number 19.<\/p>\n

That I think is as simple as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Charles S Perera It is so confusing reading the Constitution with Articles, 42,44,46,48 with\u00a0 sub-articles\u00a0 1,2 etc. Therefore of all the numbers let us take only the number 19 and try to understand what happened on the 26 October, 2018. According to number 19\u00a0 Sri Lanka cannot have more than 30 Ministers in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82690","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=82690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}