The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka has overruled the dissolution of the Parliament done by the President Maithripala Sirisena. The top court ordered to stop the preparations for next year’s snap elections. The country has been plagued with constitutional crisis since the President took a hard stance and sack prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on October 26.
Sirisena replaced Ranil Wickremesinghe with former president Mahinda Rajapakse. Wickremesinghe’s party led the petition challenging the dissolution and three-judge bench with Chief Justice Nalin Perera at the helm, read out the verdict to a jam-packed court cordoned by heavily armed police and commandos.
The court abandoned Sirisena’s proclamation on Friday sacking the legislature and ushered for elections on January 5. The verdict means the parliament has been authorised to test whether Sirisena’s controversial nominee can turn the tide by mustering a majority in the 225-member assembly and force Wickremesinghe from office.
The top court also put out order that an independent Elections Commission must stop preparing for the January 5 polls.
Earlier, Finance minister Mangala Samaraweera had said the president had “kicked the constitution in the teeth.”
“We will go to the courts,” Samaraweera had threatened quoted The Guardian. “We will fight in the courts, we will fight in parliament and we will fight at the polls.”
Meanwhile, Sirisena said that he had only dissolved the parliament to prevent civic unrest in the country. “Had I allowed the parliament to meet on November 14, there would have been violence in the House and it could have spread to our villages and towns,” Sirisena was reported as saying by NDTV in his first address to the nation since the sacking of parliament.
“I acted to prevent civil unrest.”
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