House cuts PM's budget
♦ Tamil party pledges support for coalition of Wickremesinghe
♦ Doubts grow after two port deals signed with China
Sri Lanka's parliament cut the budget of the Prime Minister's office yesterday, a move designed to hinder disputed premier Mahinda Rajapaksa whose supporters boycotted the vote in the latest twist in a weeks-long political standoff.
Lawmakers opposed to Rajapaksa, who has lost two no-confidence votes in parliament, regard his administration as illegitimate and say he should not be able to use government money for his day-to-day expenses.
"This means the prime minister will be dysfunctional. We will bring a similar motion tomorrow to cut down the expenditure of all other ministers," said Ravi Karunanayake, the former finance minister who proposed yesterday's motion which passed 123 to none in the 225-member parliament.
The vote comes more than a month after President Maithripala Sirisena triggered the crisis by ousting former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replacing him with Rajapaksa, who was then in turn sacked by parliament.
In another development yesterday, the main ethnic minority Tamil party TNA said it would support a coalition led by Wickremesinghe's party if his government were restored. They previously stood in opposition.
That would give Wickremesinghe's coalition a clear majority in parliament which Rajapaksa, at present, cannot muster.
Rajapaksa was president from 2005-2015, a decade of rule that critics said became increasingly authoritarian and marred by nepotism and corruption.
He presided over a bloody government victory over separatist rebels from the Tamil minority in 2009, ending a 26-year civil war.
Rajapaksa and his loyalists denounced yesterday's vote as "illegal" and questioned the impartiality of parliament's speaker.
"Speaker is acting completely illegally and arbitrarily. We are not participating in such illegal meetings," Rajapaksa told reporters in parliament before yesterday's proceedings started.
While the rhetoric remained belligerent from both sides, the atmosphere has cooled since Rajapaksa loyalists threw chairs and chilli paste at the speaker to try to disrupt a no-confidence motion almost two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka signed two multi-million dollar contracts with Chinese firms for a port upgrade project yesterday in the middle of the political hiatus.
An official at the state-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority told Reuters it signed two contracts with Chinese firms worth over $50 million after the deals were approved by Rajapaksa's disputed cabinet last week.
Comments