Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena alleges Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to bribe legislators to show majority in parliament

Colombo (Sri Lanka): President Maithripala Sirisena here on Saturday said that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had tried to bribe politicians in order to show majority in the country’s Parliament. [caption id=“attachment_4312471” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. AP[/caption] In an interview with Daily Mirror, Sirisena revealed that Rajapaksa failed to gather 113 members of Parliament in his support and was, therefore, unable to show a clear majority in the no-confidence motion passed in the Sri Lanka Parliament earlier in November. Sirisena further said that the main reason for Rajapaksa’s defeat was a hefty amount demanded by the Parliamentarians which the former failed to pay. “I heard some bargained themselves for sums as high as Rs 500 million. Mahinda Rajapaksa could not gather the majority because of such high price tags quoted by the MPs, if not for that, he could have gotten the majority,” the President said. “If Mahinda Rajapaksa could show the majority of 113, this problem would not have been dragged for one and half months and there won’t be any political crisis,” he added. Sirisena further assured that the Supreme Court’s decision on the petitions against the dissolution of Parliament would soon resolve the ongoing political crisis in the island nation. “If the court decides that the Parliament cannot be dissolved then he (Rajapaksa) has to let the majority of the Parliament to decide on a government with a prime minister he agrees to appoint,” the President said.