Sri Lanka: Court moved against House suspension
COLOMBO: Supporters of Sri Lanka’s fired prime minister and a top election official on Monday challenged in court the president’s sacking of parliament, upping the ante in a political crisis that has sparked international alarm.
President Maithripala Sirisena late Friday called snap elections and dissolved the legislature, two weeks after sacking the prime minister and installing the divisive Mahinda Rajapakse in his place.
The United States has led a chorus of international voices expressing concern over events in the strategically important Indian Ocean island nation of 21 million people.
Three political parties holding an absolute majority in parliament and an election commissioner, one of three officials tasked with conducting polls, on Monday asked the Supreme Court to declare the president’s actions illegal.
Commissioner Ratnajeevan Hoole was among 12 petitioners arguing that Sirisena had violated the constitution.
In the five-page petition, Hoole said Sirisena broke the law in calling the snap elections for January 5 after a string of unconstitutional moves since October 26 when he fired Ranil Wickremesinghe, the prime minister.
Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), the main opposition Tamil National Alli- ance (TNA) and the leftist JVP, or People’s Liberation Front jointly filed the action.
Tnaspokesman M. A. Sumanthiran said the Supreme Court agreed to rake up the petitions immediately considering the importance of the issue.
8 WESTERN DIPLOMATS SHUN MEETING
Eight Western countries stayed away from a meeting with Sri Lanka’s government on Monday to register their protest against President Sirisena’s decision to dissolve parliament, diplomatic and government sources said.
Foreign Minister Sarath Amunugama had called the heads of 43 foreign missions for a meeting on the political situation on Monday but only a handful turned up, the sources said.
The ambassadors of Britain, Netherlands, Norway, France, Australia, South Africa, Italy, and Canada did not attend the meeting while European Union, the United States, and Germany sent representatives, the sources said. India sent a junior representative.