{"id":5304,"date":"2019-01-26T10:25:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T10:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/?p=5304"},"modified":"2019-01-26T10:25:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T10:25:03","slug":"speaker-defends-mahinda-holding-opposition-leader-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/speaker-defends-mahinda-holding-opposition-leader-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker defends Mahinda holding opposition leader post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Speaker Karu Jayasuriya today defended the decision to name United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Parliamentarian Mahinda Rajapaksa as leader of the opposition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In a statement in Parliament, the Speaker said that Rajapaksa\u2019s appointment to the post was legitimate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sampanthan had written to the Speaker challenging Rajapaksa\u2019s appointment to the post.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Sampanthan also raised the matter in Parliament today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">His main objection was linked to Rajapaksa belonging to a party led by the President who is the head of Government.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Sampanthan said that a member of a party led by the President cannot be the leader of the opposition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Courtesy: Colombo Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Karu Jayasuriya today defended the decision to name United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance (UPFA)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5305,"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-5304","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\/5304","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=5304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}