CONSTITUTIONAL COUP

Image: Karu Jayasuriya, Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, looks on during a party leaders and members meeting at the parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka .REUTERS/DINUKA LIYANAWATTE/FILE PHOTO. (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s parliamentary speaker has called the president’s sacking of the prime minister to bring a former leader back to power a non-violent coup […]

The Commonwealth Secretary-General’s spokesperson today issued the following Statement on the unfolding political situation in Sri Lanka. Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland today noted the decision by President Sirisena to reconvene Parliament on 14 November 2018. Secretary-General Scotland emphasised the importance of the role of Parliament as provided for under the constitution and expressed hope that […]

Image (c)Human Rights Watch 2016.  There is a constitutional coup in Sri Lanka. There is much more about it at Groundviews, but you can start here if you like. Today, we marched in the thousands in the country’s capital and commercial centre, Colombo. This is a response to things I am reading on social media this evening. (EDITS made […]

President Maithripala Sirisena in a dramatic move on October 26 installed former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister, in place of his coalition partner Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the United National Party (UNP). Evidently, political expediency prompted the president to ignore the inconvenient fact that it was the support of Wickremesinghe and the […]

There were three dramatic announcements on the evening of Friday 26th October 2018 from the Presidential Secretariat, which occurred in the following order: (a) the announcement of the withdrawal of the UPFA from the government; (b) the swearing-in of Mahinda Rajapaksa before President Maithripala Sirisena as the Prime Minister; and (c) the announcement that the […]