Former president Mahinda Rajapaksa praised his successor Maithripala Sirisena for speaking in Sinhala at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month.
"I felt proud as a Sinhalese, when he (President Sirisena) spoke in our mother tongue in front of the world, although some were trying to give wrong interpretation to speaking in Sinhala at international fora," the former president said in Colombo on Thursday, the Daily Mirror reported.