{"id":99970,"date":"2020-03-15T15:37:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-15T22:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=99970"},"modified":"2020-03-15T15:37:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T22:37:01","slug":"election-wont-be-postponed-prez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/03\/15\/election-wont-be-postponed-prez\/","title":{"rendered":"Election won\u2019t be postponed &#8211; Prez"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>by Saman Indrajith Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, yesterday, said the general election would be held on 25 April, as scheduled. He said so, participating in a video conference of SAARC leaders on Sunday evening. Pakistan was represented by the Health Minister of that country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SAARC leaders\u2019 video conference was aimed at chalking out a strategy to combat coronavirus spreading in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Rajapaksa informed the SAARC leaders of the steps Sri Lanka had taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prime Minister Modi said that though the number of COVID-19 patients reported from the region was not comparatively high, the situation had to be taken seriously and everything possible done to contain the pandemic, which, yesterday, caused Spain to effect a nationwide lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Rajapaksa\u2019s assurance that the general election won\u2019t be postponed has come amidst speculation that the increasing number of COVID-19 patients being detected in the country and the suspension of political rallies and other such mass gatherings may affect the scheduled polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Saman Indrajith Courtesy The Island President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, yesterday, said the general election would be held on 25 April, as scheduled. He said so, participating in a video conference of SAARC leaders on Sunday evening. Pakistan was represented by the Health Minister of that country. The SAARC leaders\u2019 video conference was aimed at chalking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99970","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=99970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}