President of Sri Lanka dissolves parliament and calls for election

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – The President of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, has dissolved parliament and called for new elections in a context of growing political crisis.

An official notification signed by Sirisena announced the dissolution of Parliament from midnight on Friday. The names of the candidates will be called before 26 November and the elections of 5 January. The new legislature is scheduled to meet on January 17.

Sri Lanka has been in a political crisis since October 26, when Sirisena sacked his prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Wickremesinghe insisted that his dismissal was unconstitutional. He refused to leave his official residence and asked that Parliament be summoned immediately to prove that he had the support of his members.

Tensions between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have increased for some time, with the president not approving the economic reforms introduced by the prime minister. Sirisena also accused Wickremesinghe and another Cabinet member of conspiracy to murder, a charge that Wickremesinghe repeatedly denied.

Sirisena also criticized the investigations of military personnel accused of human rights violations during Sri Lanka's long-running civil war against a separatist Tamil group that ended in 2009.

Sirisena suspended Parliament for two weeks, saying Wickremesinghe supporters were meant to buy time to boost support. Local and international calls have been made to convene Parliament to end the stalemate.

In the midst of the pressure, Sirisena announced that the legislature would be convened on November 14. He maintained his choice: Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa had a majority in Parliament. However, the decision to dissolve the house shows the opposite, say the observers.

"The dissolution clearly indicates that Mr. Sirisena grossly misjudged and miscalculated the support that he could or could obtain to demonstrate his support for Parliament," said Bharath Gopalaswamy, director of the Center for South Asia's the Atlantic Council, based in New Delhi.

"At the end of the day, he is a victim of the crisis in his home."

The Wickremesinghe camp risks challenging Sirisena's decision because of constitutional provisions stipulating that a parliament can only be dissolved four and a half years after its election. The current Parliament was elected in August 2015.

"It's totally unconstitutional," said Harsha de Silva, a member of Wickremesinghe's Unified National Party and former minister. "Sirisena relegated the constitution to toilet paper. We will fight this dictator until the end. "

In a Twitter message, the party said it would meet with the Elections Commissioner to discuss the constitutionality of Sirisena's decision.

The US State Department tweeted that he was deeply concerned by the announcement of the dissolution of the Sri Lankan Parliament, "further deepening the political crisis".

"As a committed partner of Sri Lanka, we believe that democratic institutions and processes must be respected to ensure stability and prosperity," the statement said.

Earlier, the US representative Eliot Engel, the highest democratic party in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, and two other lawmakers wrote to Sirisena to warn that actions going to Against the democratic process could have an impact on US aid, including a five-year badistance program planned for the Millennium Challenge Corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

"We are concerned that recent actions, if left unchecked, will threaten the democratic development of your country and jeopardize the progress made in recent years," the three lawmakers said in a letter copied by the Associated Press.

Rajapaksa said what would happen a few hours before the breakup in a speech. He said the government should ask the people if the president had made the right decision when he appointed him prime minister.