Colombo, Sri Lanka,<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced Monday he would stand for a second term, reversing a promise to only stay for five years, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
The 72-year-old nationalist leader told top media executives he needed more time to fix Sri Lanka’s worsening economic crisis, reports said.<\/p>\n
During his 2019 election campaign, Rajapaksa said he would be a one-term president. He reaffirmed in March last year that one five-year\u00a0term\u00a0was sufficient to implement his ambitious manifesto, triggering a succession struggle within the powerful\u00a0Rajapaksa\u00a0family that dominates the government.<\/p>\n
Elections are not due until 2024, but\u00a0Rajapaksa now says he needs five more years to implement his “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendor” manifesto after the economy contracted by a record 3.6 percent in his first year. The government has banned many imports because of a foreign currency crunch.<\/p>\n
Rajapaksa “declared on Monday that he would contest for a second\u00a0term”, the pro-government website quoted him as telling media owners.<\/p>\n
Other Srilankan media also reported on the comments, which set off new speculation about the intentions of the ruling family.<\/p>\n
The elevation of the president’s youngest brother Basil, 70, as finance minister earlier this month was widely seen as a move to groom him for the presidency.<\/p>\n
Basil was thought to have edged out his nephew, Namal, the minister of sports and eldest son of Prime Minister Mahinda\u00a0Rajapaksa, to be the next family leader.<\/p>\n
“Another U-turn and maybe this squashes Basil’s chances for the next presidency,” according to Jamila Husain, a deputy editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper, on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Since his election, Gotabaya\u00a0Rajapaksa\u00a0has tightened the family grip on power.<\/p>\n
With the entry of Basil, the cabinet now has five members of the ruling family.<\/p>\n
Eldest brother Chamal, 78, is minister of irrigation. Several\u00a0Rajapaksa\u00a0family members hold junior ministerial positions and other key posts.<\/p>\n
Basil was described as “Mr Ten Percent” in a 2007 US embassy cable published by the WikiLeaks organization, because of commissions he allegedly took from government contracts.<\/p>\n
He has denied any wrongdoing and inquiries failed to find any evidence to back charges he siphoned off millions of dollars from state coffers.<\/p>\n
Basil is a dual US-Sri Lankan citizen, but Gotabaya removed constitutional provisions which blocked him from standing in a parliamentary election last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced Monday he would stand for a second term, reversing a promise to only stay for five years, according to media reports. The 72-year-old nationalist leader told top media executives he needed more time to fix Sri Lanka’s worsening economic crisis, reports said. During his 2019 election […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sri-lanka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21262,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21260\/revisions\/21262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}