Sri Lankan president’s NPP gets two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections
Colombo (PTI): Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Friday swept the parliamentary elections by winning a two-thirds majority in the parliament, the election commission result said.
The NPP, which contested under the Malimawa (compass) symbol secured 159 out of the 225 seats in the parliament, according to the results on the election commission website.
Sri Lanka’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya headed by Sajith Premadasa was a distant second with 40 seats in Thursday's poll which saw the lowest turnout since 2010.
The NPP also made history by winning the Northern Jaffna district.
In the northern Jaffna district, the cultural capital of the Tamil minority, NPP -- the predominant Sinhala majority party from the south of the country -- won the entire district over the traditional Tamil nationalist parties.
No Sinhala majority parties have won Jaffna ever before. The grand old United National Party (UNP) had previously won an odd solitary seat in Jaffna.
The NPP won the Jaffna district with over 80,000 votes and the grand old Tamil party trailed by a little over 63,000 in the final count of Thursday's polling.
This resonated pre-election comments by President Dissanayake who said his party was being accepted as a truly national party by all communities. “The era of dividing and setting one community against the other has ended as people are embracing the NPP," Dissanayake, the NPP leader, said.
The NPP under its original Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) violently opposed any attempt of power sharing -- a key Tamil demand during the armed separatist campaign of the LTTE. The Tamils only saw them as Sinhala majority racists.
The NPP received over 6.8 million or 61 per cent of the votes counted, taking a commanding lead over its rivals.
Sri Lanka’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya headed by Sajith Premadasa was a distant second with 40 seats, in a poll with the lowest turnout since 2010.
Sri Lanka went to polls amid a stabilisation crisis after a currency collapse from aggressive macro-economic policy involving rate cuts enforced with aggressive liquidity operations on top of tax cuts.
Among the unpopular measures imposed under the IMF programme was high personal income taxes which impoverished middle class wage earners by taking away earnings before they were spent.
The NPP hopes to negotiate down some of the taxes in talks to the IMF next week.
The election came a year ahead of schedule as Dissanyaake dismissed the parliament immediately after taking charge as the president in September.
The new parliament is set to meet next week.
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Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
Melbourne (AP): A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney's Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, Australian police documents released on Monday allege.
The men recorded a video about their justification for the meticulously planned attack, according to a police statement of facts that was made public following Naveed Akram's video court appearance Monday from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
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The New South Wales state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred on Monday from a hospital to a prison. Neither facility was identified by authorities.
The statement alleges the 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode.
Police described the devices as three aluminium pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, black powder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia's worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram's phone shows him with his father "reciting their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to the Islamic State,” police said.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
