Colombo: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament six months ahead of schedule and called a snap election on 25 April. He signed the Gazette notification dissolving Parliament, the Government Printers Department said. Gotabaya sacked the Parliament after the minimum term of four-and-a-half years necessary to dissolve it was completed on midnight Sunday.
According to the notification, elections will be held on 25 April and the new Parliament will have its first session on 14 May. The political parties and independent candidates can file nominations to contest the poll between 12 and 19 March. Over 16.2 million voters are eligible to vote to elect 196 members under proportional representation and a further 29 members on national cumulative votes of each party based on proportional representation.
President Rajapaksa, who named his elder brother and former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa as the prime minister of the caretaker cabinet in December, earlier said he wanted two-thirds seats in the 225-member Assembly.
Gotabaya was elected to office last November but has said he cannot work freely because his powers had been reduced. He has also faced restrictions because the opposition commanded a majority in the 225-member Parliament. The election campaigning period will include the first anniversary of a series of Islamic State-inspired suicide bombings on Easter Sunday last year that killed more than 250 people last year in churches and tourist hotels.
Gotabaya rode to power criticizing the previous government for serious security and intelligence lapses that preceded the bombings. It was the worst violence in Sri Lanka since the country's 26-year civil war ended in May 2009. Constitutional changes initiated by Rajapaksa's predecessor, Maithripala Sirisena, reduced presidential powers, giving them to the Parliament and to independent commissions. The change virtually created two political power centers - the president and the prime minister, with the prime minister in charge of Parliament and government ministers.
Rajapaksa's brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is the prime minister and leads a minority government. Gotabaya needs two-thirds parliamentary support to pass any changes to the constitution.
