CP alleges Prez threat to Parliament

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Dissident SLPP MP Weerasumana Weerasinghe alleges that President Ranil Wickremesinghe is behaving like a dictator in and outside Parliament.

The Matara District MP said that the sabotaging of the scheduled local government polls was just one glaring example of Wickremesinghe’s authoritarian tendencies.

Responding to The Island queries, Weerasinghe said Wickremesinghe seemed to have forgotten he was elected by Parliament to complete the remainder of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s five-year term.

The President should have fully concentrated on restoring economic stability and take whatever tangible measures required to accomplish that task, MP Weerasinghe said. Instead, President Wickremesinghe was trying to consolidate his position and that of his party, , the CP representative said.

MP Weerasinghe alleged that Wickremesinghe brazenly manipulated the Parliament and those who elected him as the President last year.

Weerasinghe said the UNP leader was hell-bent on crippling Independent Commissions including the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka.

He said that handling of the Election Commission and the Public Utilities Commission was intended to be a warning to all. “Western powers won’t intervene as long as they felt the incumbent government followed their agenda,” MP Weerasinghe said.

The lawmaker said that the much-touted claim that the Treasury lacked the wherewithal to conduct the local government elections was unacceptable. “Successive governments have conducted elections even during the northern and southern terror periods. President Ranasinghe Premadasa conducted elections despite the presence of the Indian Army in the Northern and Eastern districts,” MP Weerasinghe said.

“The Opposition will continue to push for local government polls. If Wickremesinghe succeeds in sabotaging the local government polls, he’ll do the same to the next general election as well,” MPWeerasinghe said.

Referring to President Wickremesinghe’s recent declaration, at China Bay, Trincomalee, that the only way to bring about a change of government was through a parliamentary election and not through street protests and the latter was not a viable option for the Parliament, MP Weerasinghe said that the President couldn’t be unaware his predecessor was removed through unconstitutional means. “Wickremesinghe is the beneficiary of those uprisings Having secured the presidency, the UNP leader now wants to deprive the public of their basic rights,” the MP said, urging all political parties to sink their differences to protect Parliament from what he called Wickremesinghe’s offensive.