{"id":83238,"date":"2018-11-15T03:51:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T10:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83238"},"modified":"2018-11-15T03:51:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T10:51:11","slug":"speaker-is-misusing-powers-mahinda-rajapaksa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/15\/speaker-is-misusing-powers-mahinda-rajapaksa\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker is misusing powers &#8211; Mahinda Rajapaksa"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Mahinda Rajapaksa says that the Prime Minister is appointed by the President and not the Speaker and accused Speaker\u00a0 Karu Jayasuriya of misusing his powers and acting in a baised manner.<\/p>\n<p>He also said that he does not care about the premiership and that he accepted the position to save the country from the brink of disaster.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister or not, I am still Mahinda Rajapaksa. I don\u2019t care about the Prime Ministership,\u201d he responded to accusations from opposition MPs, saying he was no longer PM, as he commenced his speech in Parliament this morning (15).<\/p>\n<p>It may be big for him. But not for me. I didn\u2019t come here for the premiership. I have been prime minister before and I have been president,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t think I am here talking for the premiership,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Speaker is misusing powers - Mahinda Rajapaksa\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hM50lPRyEmY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa said that he had never seen a darker day\u201d like yesterday in Parliament of the country, referring to the no-confidence vote.<\/p>\n<p>He said that when the President invited him to take over the position of Prime Minister he could have said no and to let the UNP continue for another year.<\/p>\n<p>But we have a duty to save the country from the brink of disaster, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Referring to the passing of a motion of no-confidence against him and the government at parliament yesterday, which was taken by voice vote, Rajapaksa said that such important votes cannot be taken by voice.<\/p>\n<p>He stated that the Prime Minister is appointed by the President and not the Speaker.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t misunderstand your powers,\u201d he said pointing to the Speaker. Parliament has not given you those powers.\u201d He also accused the Karu Jayasuriya of misusing powers of the Speaker.<\/p>\n<p>We are expecting an independent speaker not a biased speaker,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The Prime Minister expressed his regret that the Speaker is acting for his party and friends abroad\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa expressed his gratitude to the JVP for stating yesterday that they would support a motion to dissolve parliament and go for polls. What is UNP\u2019s stance?\u201d he questioned.<\/p>\n<p>He invited all 225 Members of the Parliament to support him to hold a General Election and not think about their pensions at this moment.<\/p>\n<p>We want an election. A general election,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n<p>The Prime Minister said that the government will reduce fuel prices once again tonight to give relief to masses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Mahinda Rajapaksa says that the Prime Minister is appointed by the President and not the Speaker and accused Speaker\u00a0 Karu Jayasuriya of misusing his powers and acting in a baised manner. He also said that he does not care about the premiership and that he accepted the position to save the country from [&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-83238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83238","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=83238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}