{"id":36970,"date":"2018-11-15T13:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T07:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=36970"},"modified":"2018-11-15T13:36:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T08:06:16","slug":"sri-lanka-court-stays-dissolution-snap-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/sri-lanka-court-stays-dissolution-snap-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka court stays dissolution, snap elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/international\/sri-lanka-court-stays-dissolution-snap-elections\/article25488703.ece\"><strong>Sri Lanka court stays dissolution, snap elections<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>News:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Sri Lanka\u2019s Supreme Court (SC) stayed President Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s dissolution of Parliament and restrained the Election Commission from preparing for snap elections.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Important Facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Background: <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>President Sirisena\u2019s on November 9 decided to dissolve Parliament after his party publicly admitted to lacking a majority in the House, heightening a political crisis that began on October 26.<\/li>\n<li>Moreover, just five days before Parliament was due to reconvene, Mr. Sirisena dissolved it and called<strong> snap elections<\/strong> for January 5.<\/li>\n<li>Sirisena also fired his PM Wickremesinghe, installed former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place, and swiftly swore in a \u201cnew cabinet\u201d, in the face of strong local and international criticism.<\/li>\n<li>Dissolution of Parliament prevented a vote on the House to test the rival camps\u2019 claims to the majority.<\/li>\n<li>Almost all political parties, except those aligned to the Sirisena-Rajapaksa front, petitioned the Supreme Court challenging the \u201cillegal\u201d action.<\/li>\n<li>Government response: The Attorney General responded before SC, invoking the President\u2019s plenary powers in the Constitution to argue that his actions were constitutional.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Immediate causes of the crises:<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Tensions had been building between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe for some time, as the president did not approve of <strong>economic reforms <\/strong>introduced by the prime minister.<\/li>\n<li>Sirisena was critical of<strong> investigations into military personnel <\/strong>accused of human rights violations during Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war against a Tamil separatist group, which ended in 2009.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li>According to the constitution, Parliament can\u2019t be dissolved until 4 1\/2 years after its election. The current Parliament was elected in August 2015.<\/li>\n<li>Moreover, the <strong>Speaker of Sri Lanka\u2019s Parliament<\/strong> said that he recognizes Wickremesinghe as the country&#8217;s lawful prime minister until another candidate can prove a majority in parliament.<\/li>\n<li>He has also accused President Sirisena of \u201cusurping\u201d the rights of legislators and asked public servants not to carry out his \u201cillegal orders\u201d.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Significance:<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>This political crisis is threatening democracy and the rule of law in that South Asian country.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n<li><strong>India\u2019s Case:<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>India would be <strong>\u201cdoubly cautious\u201d <\/strong>in dealing with any political situation in Sri Lanka given its own history of military intervention in Sri Lanka i.e. sending Indian peacekeeping troops but itself sucked into the civil war, with its soldiers getting killed.<\/li>\n<li>In the present crisis, there was no question of Sri Lankan Tamils getting affected so India\u2019s resorting to a hands-off approach would be the most prudent.<\/li>\n<li>Moreover, meddling in the crisis would give rise to anti-India sentiments which would, in turn, give China an advantage to increase its footprint in and around India\u2019s periphery with loans and infrastructure projects.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n<li><strong>Way Forward:<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Following the SC ruling to stay the Parliament dissolution, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya had convened Parliament.<\/li>\n<li>However it remains unclear if the House will take up a floor test but its reconvening, nearly three weeks after it was prorogued, and subsequently dissolved comes as good news to parties that deemed the President\u2019s sudden actions unconstitutional.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lanka court stays dissolution, snap elections News: Sri Lanka\u2019s Supreme Court (SC) stayed President Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s dissolution of Parliament and restrained the Election Commission from preparing for snap elections. Important Facts: Background: President Sirisena\u2019s on November 9 decided to dissolve Parliament after his party publicly admitted to lacking a majority in the House, heightening&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/sri-lanka-court-stays-dissolution-snap-elections\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sri Lanka court stays dissolution, snap elections<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[224,239,658,657,624],"class_list":["post-36970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","tag-gs-2","tag-international-relations","tag-maithripala-sirisenas","tag-sri-lanka","tag-sri-lanka-election","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704840944},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}