Sri Lanka: President Calls Snap Election to End Power Struggle

 
Current political unrest in Sri Lanka results in the sufferings of the peoples. President Maithripala Sirisena last Friday dismissed the current parliament and called for a snap election that would help to get away with the current political turmoil.
Experts suspecting this move would lead the path to leave the country facing a further two months of damaging political paralysis with a pair of bitter rivals claiming to run his government as the opponents condemned the snap election as an illegal move.
Sirisena dissolved the country’s parliament on Friday in a gamble that a new election will secure backing for his preferred candidate as prime minister, over an ousted premier who has refused to leave. Sirisena signed a decree dismissing the island’s 225-member assembly and scheduled parliamentary elections for 5 January, nearly two years ahead of schedule. Hours earlier Sirisena’s party admitted it did not have enough votes to support former president Mahinda Rajapakse against the rival claimant and ousted Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has refused to leave his post. There was no immediate comment from Wickremesinghe, but his United National Party, or UNP, said it will challenge Sirisena’s sacking of the legislature.
Sirisena had come under increased international pressure from the United States, the United Nations and the European Union to allow parliament to vote on which prime minister should form a government.
Ousted Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has refused to leave the premier’s official residence.
Washington swiftly criticised Sirisena’s latest move.
Wickremesinghe, who has not left the Temple Trees residence since his sacking, maintains that the action against him was unconstitutional and illegal, and insists his group can muster a majority.
Under pressure from the UN, the US and the EU to allow a parliamentary vote, Sirisena agreed three times to lift the suspension but changed his mind each time.
The EU said on Friday, before the dissolution, that the crisis had scarred the Indian Ocean Island’s international reputation.
In a joint statement with Norway and Switzerland, the EU called for parliament to reconvene and hold an immediate vote.
The power struggle on the island of 21 million people has paralysed much of the administration, according to legislators on both sides of the dispute.
< Alma Siddiqua