Former Sri Lanka president intensifies efforts to resume power

 

Former Sri Lanka president intensifies efforts to resume power

By
K. Ratnayake

3 February 2017

Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has urged his supporters to help him topple the government. Addressing a January 27 rally of tens of thousands in the Colombo suburb of Nugegoda, Rajapakse denounced the government as “corrupt” and declared he was “ready to lead the force” to bring it down.

Promoted as “The beginning of the struggle,” the event was part of intensifying efforts by Rajapakse, a group of sitting parliamentarians, known as the Joint Opposition (JO), and their supporters to return him to power.

The escalating conflict between the Rajapakse-led JO and the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is an expression of deepening political instability within the ruling elite. Colombo faces escalating balance of trade and foreign debt problems and growing struggles of workers and the poor against its social austerity measures.

Currently 45 members of parliament, including Rajapakse, back the former president, and sit on the opposition benches. The group includes a faction of Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Sirisena has the support of just 50 MPs. Wickremesinghe heads the United National Party (UNP).

Rajapakse told last week’s rally his faction would oppose the government’s “fraudulent new constitution,” which he claimed would “break up the country.” “The motive of the new constitution,” he declared, “is to appease the Tamil minority in their quest for political independence.”

Referring to the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under his government in 2009, Rajapakse said, “we have to…

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