{"id":194018,"date":"2018-12-15T00:02:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T05:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=194018"},"modified":"2018-12-15T00:02:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T05:02:03","slug":"rajapaksa-set-to-quit-as-sri-lankas-premier-to-end-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/15\/rajapaksa-set-to-quit-as-sri-lankas-premier-to-end-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Rajapaksa set to quit as Sri Lanka’s premier to end crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rajapaksa is a former strongman president who is considered by some as a war hero for defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009 after a long civil war. (File Photo<\/a>: Mahinda Rajapaksa\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) \u2014 A Sri Lankan lawmaker said that disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will resign Saturday to end the country’s political crisis.<\/p>\n

The pro-Rajapaksa lawmaker, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, told reporters that Rajapaksa decided in a meeting Friday with President Maithripala Sirisena to resign to allow the president to appoint a new government.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has had no functioning government for nearly two weeks and is facing the prospect of being unable to pass a budget for next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless the prime minister resigns, another prime minister cannot be appointed. But the country needs to face situations that it needs to face in January; a country cannot function without a budget,\u201d Abeywardena said. \u201cTherefore Mr. Rajapaksa says that he will make a special statement tomorrow and resign from the position of prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision appears to have been hastened by a Supreme Court decision to extend a lower court’s suspension of Rajapaksa and his Cabinet. The top court put off the next hearing until mid-January, when it plans to rule on whether they should hold office after losing two no-confidence votes in Parliament.<\/p>\n

The country runs the risk of being unable to use state funds from Jan. 1 if there is no government to approve the budget. It also has a foreign debt repayment of $1 billion due in early January and it is unclear if it can be serviced without a lawful finance minister.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has been in political crisis since October, when Sirisena abruptly sacked then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with Rajapaksa.<\/p>\n

Rajapaksa is a former strongman president who is considered by some as a war hero for defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009 after a long civil war. But he lost a 2015 re-election bid amid allegations of wartime atrocities, corruption and nepotism. After his appointment as prime minister, he sought to secure a majority in the 225-member Parliament but failed. Sirisena then dissolved Parliament and called new elections, but the Supreme Court struck down that move as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Sirisena has repeatedly rejected appeals to reappoint Wickremesinghe as prime minister, but may now be compelled to do so since Wickremesinghe has the support of 117 lawmakers in Parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) \u2014 A Sri Lankan lawmaker said that disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will resign Saturday to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":194020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-krishan-francis","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}