He further extended his thanks to all the activists and people’s representatives who worked in the election campaign on behalf of the UPFA.
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Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday urged Sri Lanka’s parties to work together as he began forming a new government backed by minority Tamils after a surge in support for his reform-driven agenda in parliamentary elections.
Wickremesinghe’s United National Party won a total of 106 seats in the 225-member Assembly, falling short of an absolute majority by seven seats but enough to form a government.
“I have got a mandate to put our plan before Parliament, so that we could arrive at a consensus and build a national framework within which we will do our politics”, he said.
He invited all the political parties in parliament to come forward from conventionalism and asked them to join with the government, with existing positions or with the positions that will be created. An earlier cohabitation between a president and a prime minister elected from different parties ended after bickering.
Pointing out that the verdict of Monday’s parliamentary poll confirmed the “January 8 revolution” [referring to the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa at the hands of Maithripala Sirisena in the presidential elections], the UNP leader said it also favoured “good governance that we have started”. The president has wide executive powers and usually holds the defense, foreign relations and sometimes finance portfolios.
United National Party (UNP) leader and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Wednesday his government would not allow anyone to indulge in divisive politics.
Police and election monitors reported a few incidents, but there was no serious incident or any organised attempts to interfere with the voting, the report quoted Justice Perera as saying.
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The Commonwealth observer group said the election was “credible, met the key criteria for democratic elections and the outcome reflected the will of the people of Sri Lanka”.
