Former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has unofficially launched his bid to run for the presidency at the 2019 elections with a ceremony at the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo.<\/p>\n
Political sources said Rajapaksa had invited his three politically active brothers as guests of what he called the launch his 2030 vision for Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
In a 25-minute address in Sinhala, the former defence chief spoke of Sri Lanka needing a \u201csocialist, market-economy\u201d while protecting the sovereignty and the culture of the island.<\/p>\n
He also spoke of economic reforms and warned that a \u201cwindow of opportunity\u201d will not be open for ever. He lamented that Sri Lanka was still dependent on traditional exports and lacked high-value added industrial exports.<\/p>\n
The meeting came in the backdrop of an internal power struggle within the Rajapaksa family where younger brother Basil had hoped to be the presidential candidate in 2019.<\/p>\n
Basil established his credentials by leading his newly formed SLPP to victory at the February local elections. In contrast, Gotabhaya was completely out of the election campaign of the SLPP.<\/p>\n
Several allies of the SLFP, including Vasudeva Nanayakkara, has asked former president Rajapaksa\u2019s eldest brother Chamal to be a compromise candidate.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear if the charismatic former president would support Chamal over Gotabhaya or Basil, but insiders say he was also keen on making a return to power.<\/p>\n
Mahinda Rajapaksa was banking on the national unity government changing the constitution and reverting the country to a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy so that he could return as an executive prime minister.<\/p>\n
Gotabhaya has a legal hurdle if he wants to enter public life. Under the 19th amendment, no dual-citizen of Sri Lanka can contest elections. However, he could renounce his US citizenship to enter local politics.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Economy Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has unofficially launched his bid to run for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-srilankan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}