President Wickremesinghe invites Sri Lankan parties to form national government
Colombo(PTI): Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has written to members of Parliament, inviting them to form an all-party national government to help the bankrupt country to recover from the worst economic crisis.
The government is currently engaged in great efforts to gradually restore normalcy to the political and social unrest created by the economic crisis that the country is facing today," Wickremesinghe said in the letter on Friday.
"Accordingly, initial plans required to implement a systematic economic programme are being formulated while preliminary measures are also being undertaken for the creation of economic stability, he added.
Wickremesinghe said a programme could only be implemented with the participation of all political parties represented in Parliament, expert groups and civil society.
He also proposed to start a dialogue with parties on the reintroduction of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
The 19A adopted in 2015 pruned presidential powers by empowering Parliament above the executive president. Wickremesinghe was the main sponsor of the 19th Amendment in 2015.
However, the 19A was scrapped after Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the November 2019 presidential election.
Sri Lankan MPs on July 20 elected Wickremesinghe as the country's new president, with the majority of the vote coming from lawmakers representing ousted President Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party.
There were only two non-SLPP lawmakers in the Cabinet appointed on Friday. Constitutionally, the Cabinet can be extended up to 30 members.
The 73-year-old President was appointed for the rest of the term of Rajapaksa who initially fled to the Maldives and then to Singapore.
Rajapaksa is accused of mishandling the economic crisis, the worst since 1948. Wickremesinghe was appointed prime minister by Rajapaksa in mid-May.
He was tasked with reviving the economy by giving early solutions to fuel, cooking gas and power shortage problems, which triggered mass agitations against Rajapaksa.
The government declared bankruptcy in mid-April by refusing to honour its international debt.
Wickremesinghe on Wednesday said his government's main priorities are to fix the country's ailing economy and end the severe fuel shortage that has exacerbated after the last shipment under the Indian credit line arrived in the country in June.
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No expansion, reshuffle of Cabinet in Karnataka right now, says CM Siddaramaiah
New Delhi: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who reportedly met the Congress High Command here on Friday, has clarified that the state Cabinet will be neither reshuffled nor expanded in the near future. He also stated that the news was generated and spread by the media although he had not hinted at any such occurrence.
Addressing reporters in the city after meeting President of All India Congress Committee (AICC) Mallikarjun Kharge and former President and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Siddaramaiah hit back at the media when asked about cabinet reshuffle and expansion in Karnataka. Denying having made any such statement so far, the CM said that the reporters were themselves answerable for it, given that the news was generated and spread by reporters.
He also pointed out that the media houses had published lists of Congress members who would possibly be the new ministers in the Karnataka government.
Siddaramaiah, who further said that the issues of restructuring the volume of the Cabinet, creation of portfolios and expansion were not discussed with the party high command, however, said that senior member Nagendra would be made a member of the Cabinet later.
A conference of the Congress party and the Backward Class organization, ‘Swabhimani Janandolana Samavesha’, will be organized on December 5 and attended by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President DK Shivakumar and Congress leader in-charge of Karnataka Randeep Singh Surjewala, said Siddaramaiah. He clarified that he had no information of any ‘anonymous letter’ regarding the conference to the high command and added that AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge too had made no reference to such communication during their meeting on Friday.
