Sirisena not running for Lanka presidency
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday ruled out contesting the presidential elections for a second term as he failed to make a deposit to contest the November 16 polls.the deadline to make the deposits ended at 12 noon on Sunday and Sirisena was not among the 41 candidates who had paid deposits in order to handover nominations on Monday. A record 41 candidates representing different political parties and independent groups have placed cash deposits for the election. This is the largest number of presidential candidates who have deposited money in the history, officials said.
Additionally, the election will be the first since 1982 when the incumbent President, Prime Minister or opposition leader would not be a candidate.
President Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the main opposition leader Mahinda Rajapaksa are not in the fray for varying reasons.
Sirisena, who held crucial talks with Rajapaksa last night, has decided to support the candidature of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who will now be the main opposition challenger pitted against the ruling United National Party (UNP) candidate Sajith Premadasa. VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis opened a synod Sunday to champion the Amazon’s poverty-stricken and isolated indigenous communities by condemning the destructive “interests” he blamed for the fires that devastated the region.
“The fire set by interests that destroy, like the fire that recently devastated Amazonia, is not the fire of the Gospel,” he said before the bishops from the nine countries of the pan-amazonian region and representatives of indigenous peoples.
“The fire of God is warmth that attracts and gathers into unity. It is fed by sharing, not by profits.
“The fire that destroys, on the other hand, blazes up when people want to promote only their own ideas, form their own group, wipe out differences in the attempt to make everyone and everything uniform.”
The global spotlight has recently been on the world’s largest rainforest, which is vital for the planet but is suffering from its worst outbreak of fires in years, due in part to an acceleration in deforestation.
The working document for the synod denounced in scathing terms social injustices and crimes, including murders, and suggested a Church action plan.
“Listen to the cry of ‘Mother Earth’, assaulted and seriously wounded by the economic model of predatory and ecocidal development... which kills and plunders, destroys and devastates, expels and discards,” the 80-page document said.