Sri Lanka Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said he was confident that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) will win with a two-thirds majority in the upcoming parliamentary elections, at a rally earlier this week.
Rajapaksa claimed the SLPP “was born and emerged as a strong party due to the intimidation and harassment by the Yahapalana Government” and highlighted how the previous government overlooked the SLPP as the opposition party, despite winning 53 seats.
“Though the party with the highest number of seats should have been given the Opposition Leader's post, the Yahapalana Government did not follow this custom. It awarded the post to the Tamil National Alliance which had only 16 seats and the Chief Opposition Organiser was appointed from the JVP which had only six seats," he said.
Rajapaksa emphasised how he was eventually awarded the opposition leader’s post – following the 2018 coup which saw him as the ‘unconstitutionally elected’ prime minister for 52 days – and that the SLPP was formed “amidst all these obstacles and was able to achieve a landslide victory at the previous local government elections.”
A two-thirds victory for the SLPP in the upcoming parliamentary next month is seen as necessary to repeal the 19th amendment which would warrant them power to make constitutional changes.
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