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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) – The Sri Lankan president has dissolved parliament and called for elections on January 5 to counter the worsening of the political crisis after his dismissal of the prime minister, deemed unconstitutional by President.
An official notification signed by President Maithripala Sirisena announced the dissolution of Parliament from midnight on Friday. The names of the candidates will be called before 26 November and the new Parliament will meet on 17 January.
Sri Lanka has been in crisis since October 26, when Sirisena fired his prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, to replace him by former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa. They both said they had a majority in Parliament and that they were expected to face the 225-member house Wednesday after its suspension of about 19 days.
Foreign Minister Sarath Amunugama told the Associated Press on Saturday that the reason the President dissolved Parliament was the need to go to the people to find a solution to the crisis.
"On the 14th, there would be a lot of non-parliamentary activity and activity sponsored by the speaker," Amunugama said. "The speaker did not plan to act in accordance with the constitution and regulations of the Parliament."
Supporters of Sirisena were upset by President Karu Jayasuriya's announcement that he would call for a vote for either party to show his support.
"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 South Asia Center's analyst-based group of analysts. Canada, Atlantic Council. "At the end of the day, he is a victim of the crisis in his home."
Wickremesinghe insisted that his dismissal is 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 criticized the investigations of soldiers accused of human rights violations during Sri Lanka's long-running civil war against a separatist Tamil group that ended in 2009. Rajapaksa, who chaired to the presidency from 2005 to 2015, is considered a hero by the Sinhalese ethnic group. majority to win the conflict. But he lost a bid for reelection in 2015 following accusations of nepotism, corruption and war atrocities.
The Wickremesinghe camp is likely to challenge 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 aggravating 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 assistance 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.
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Associated Press editors Krishan Francis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Emily Schmall in New Delhi and Matthew Pennington in Washington, DC contributed to the writing of this report.
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