Lanka crisis: Rajapaksa has support of 113 MPs to prove premiership, says President Sirisena
Colombo, Nov 5 : Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Monday claimed he has the support of 113 parliamentarians to prove the premiership of Mahinda Rajapaksa.
His comments came after Lankan Speaker Karu Jayasuriya earlier in the day slammed Sirisena's "unconstitutional and undemocratic" actions to sack Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and suspend Parliament, saying he will not recognise Rajapaksa as the new premier unless he wins a floor test.
"We have already got our 113 MPs, I will not take back the step I have taken forward... have taken all steps in accordance with the constitution," Sirisena told a public rally, referring to his decision to sack Wickremesinghe.
Sirisena suspended parliamentary proceedings until November 16 after abruptly firing Wickremesinghe and replacing him with Rajapaksa, a controversial former president, on October 26.
The Speaker had expected parliament to reconvene on November 7. However, Sirisena Sunday issued notice to reconvene Parliament on November 14.
Wickremesinghe, whose party dubbed the move a "constitutional coup", refused to vacate his official residence, saying he is the lawful prime minister and that the president has no constitutional right to replace him.
The rally, attended by thousands of supporters, was the first public show of Sirisena and Rajapaksa together after the island nation plunged into a constitutional crisis.
With eight United National Party and one Tamil National Alliance legislators defecting to Rajapaksa camp, he is now just eight seats short of the 'magic number' 113 to prove his majority in the 225-member House.
While addressing the rally, Sirisena said before opting for Rajapaksa as his prime ministerial choice, he had offered the premiership position to Speaker Jayasuriya and deputy PM Sajith Premadasa. "However, both of them refused to challenge their leader," Sirisena said.
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After poll debacle, defeated MVA candidates to seek verification of EVM-VVPAT units
Mumbai(PTI): The Maha Vikas Aghadi candidates who faced defeat in the recent Maharashtra assembly polls have decided to seek verification of the EVM-Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) units in their segments, a leader of the opposition alliance said.
Many losing candidates of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) pointed fingers at the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during their interaction with party head Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday.
Thackeray took stock of the lacklustre performance of his party at a meeting held at his residence in Mumbai.
The poll verdict last week saw the Mahayuti coalition, comprising the Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP, retaining power with a massive mandate, pushing the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to margins.
The Mahayuti won 230 seats and MVA only 46 in the 288-member House.
The Thackeray-led Sena (UBT) emerged as the largest party in the opposition camp by winning 20 seats, followed by Congress which bagged 16 constituencies, while the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) sits at the bottom with a tally of 10 seats.
Talking to PTI on Tuesday, Congress leader Arif Naseem Khan, who lost the election from Chandivali assembly constituency in Mumbai, said he held a discussion with Thackeray, who also said he has got complaints from his party workers that EVMs could have been tampered.
"We are getting complaints from different parts of the state expressing doubts over the results. In a democracy, complaints need to be verified and many of us, including myself, (who faced defeat) are in the process of applying for the verification," Khan said.
As per the Supreme Court's judgement on April 26 this year, the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5 per cent of the EVMs - the control unit, ballot unit and the VVPAT - per assembly constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from manufacturers of the EVMs, after the announcement of results, for any tampering or modification, he said.
A written request for this has to be made by candidates who are in the second or third position behind the highest polled candidate.
Such a request has to be made within seven days of declaration of the result, Khan said.
A candidate making the request will have to pay the expenses of Rs 41,000 which will be refunded in case the machine is found to be tampered with, he said.
The microcontroller is a one-time programmable chip embedded into the three units of EVM-Ballot Unit, Control Unit and the VVPAT - at the time of manufacturing, as per the SC.
A Sena (UBT) MLA from Mumbai has claimed there were discrepancies between the votes polled and the votes counted in the EVMs.
"Almost all candidates raised doubts over the EVMs," the legislator said.
