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Unlike others before him:
President did not use executive powers arbitrarily
Lakshmi DE SILVA
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has not used the executive powers of
Presidency arbitrarily but others before him had used those powers for
their own advantage during the UNP regimes from 1977 to 1994. The UNP
killed 66,000 youth in cold blood including 664 young Buddhist monks who
were brought to the Colombo University Law Faculty and killed. But now
the leaders have forgotten it, Environment and Natural Resources
Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said.
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Environment and Natural Resources Minister Patali Champika
Ranawaka,Ven Athureliye Ratana Thera, MP and JHU Spokesman
Nishantha Warnasinghe at the press conferemce. Picture by
Pabodhi Lanka |
Addressing a United People’s Freedom Alliance press conference
yesterday at the Mahveli Centre he said during the same regime the UNP
got hooligans to stone the residences of Judges and when the media asked
Jayewardene he called it a democratic protest. LSSP women wing leader
Vivienne Gunawardena MP was assaulted by the police at a police station.
Then Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon left the country in protest.
The conspiracy of J.R. Jayewardene was that he was not elected by the
people as Executive President in 1978 but got himself elected by the
Parliament where he had five sixth majority. Similarly, UNP and
Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was using Presidential candidate
Sarath Fonseka to get himself appointed Executive Prime Minister he
said.
There was a conspiracy to create confusion during the Presidential
Election. The present opposition campaign is based on hatred. Their sole
aim was to attack President Mahinda Rajapaksa he noted.
Answering a question from a journalist Ranawaka said there was hue
and cry about a jumbo cabinet of the UPFA but the 1977 UNP regime of J.R.
Jayewardene had a Parliament with 72 ministers including District
Ministers. In President Premadasa’s regime there were 97 Ministers
including District Ministers and Ministers of State. During the 2001 UNP
regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe there were 98 ministers. This trend was
due to the instability caused by the proportional representation
electoral system and leaders had to offer positions to persons to have
stable governments, he said. |
