Prime Minister responds to President's remarks on special cabinet meeting

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday (Sept 22) said that issues concerning matters discussed at the ministerial cabinet must be taken up before the cabinet alone.

He made this remarks while issuing a counter statement to President Maithripala Sirisena's remarks that the Prime Minister had requested to convene a special cabinet meeting to discuss on abolishing the Executive Presidency.

In his statement, Mr. Wickremesinghe stated that civic groups which had called on him recently had urged the abolition of the Executive Presidency -  a key promise of the government, by passing it in the cabinet and then in Parliament.

"They (civic groups) handed over a bill to me seeking to put it forward before cabinet," he said,

However, the Prime Minister noted that he had replied to them by saying that doing so without the support of other political parties would be difficult in order to pass it in Parliament.

Accordingly, he added that he had told civic groups to consult other political parties and report back to him on their opinion.

"The President called me at 8:16 am on September 19 asking whether a cabinet meeting could be convened on the proposed 20th amendment," the Prime Minister said.

He explained that he had agreed to convene the meeting due to the request of civic groups and also because Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran had previously told him that the President had shown a positive response towards this matter.

The bill handed over by civic groups too had been sent to the cabinet secretary to be put forward when required, he said.

"Before the cabinet meeting, I informed the President that the ministers were not in agreement on discussing this matter. As soon as the meeting began, I told the cabinet secretary that putting forth the proposed bill would be useless due to this reason," the Prime Minister stated.

He emphasised that the meeting had ended in a stalemate since there were diverse opinions expressed towards this matter.

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