COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s opposition on Monday dismissed the chairman’s assignation to join a concinnity government as “ crazy” and rather demanded he abdicate over the country’s worsening dearths of food, energy and drugs.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s preamble came as fortified colors looked to quell further demonstrations over what the government acknowledges is the country’s most severe profitable extremity since independence from Britain in 1948.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse thousands of protesters trying to storm the private home of the high minister — the chairman’s elder family and the head of the family political clan — in Tangalle, formerly a fortification of support for the Rajapaksas in the islet’s south.
The chairman asked opposition parties represented in congress to “ join the trouble to seek results to the public extremity,” after the late- night abdication of nearly all press ministers to pave the way for a revamped administration.
“ We’ll not be joining this government,” Eran Wickramaratne of the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party told AFP. “ The Rajapaksa family must step down.” It limited a day of rejections from political parties demanding the formerly popular and important ruling family relinquish power.
“ He really must be a lunatic to suppose that opposition MPs will prop up a government that’s worsening,” legislator Anura Dissanayake of the leftist People’s Liberation Front (JVP) told journalists in the capital Colombo.
And Abraham Sumanthiran of the Tamil National Alliance told AFP “ His offer to reconstitute the press with opposition MPs is crazy and infuriates the people who have been demanding his abdication.”
Every member of Sri Lanka’s press except the chairman and his elder family, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, abnegated late on Sunday.
The country’s central bank governor Ajith Cabraal — who has long opposed the International Monetary Fund bailout now being sought by the country — also stepped down on Monday.
A day after en masse adoptions, the chairman reappointed four of the gregarious ministers — three of them to their old jobs — while replacing family Basil Rajapaksa as finance minister with the former justice chief.
Noisy demonstrations have spread across the country since Sunday evening with thousands of people joining.
Thousands of youthful men and women dressed substantially in black and carrying hand- written bills and posters offered a noisy but peaceful demonstration at a busy cloverleaf in Colombo on Monday. “ Step down Rajapaksa,” said one bill, while another read “ Return the finances stolen from the democracy.”
“ Gota lunatic, go home Gota,” crowds chanted away in the megacity, pertaining to the chairman.
