COLOMBO, October 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Former Sri Lankan Parliament
Speaker Anura Bandaranaike has charged that the main opposition
United National Party (UNP) had distorted all norms of
parliamentary democracy by getting businessmen to buy over
government ministers and politicians. He said in an interview with the official Daily News on Friday
that although the government had been voted for a six year period
it had been in office only for one year which is a very disturbing
trend. Voters have been left in the lurch by dishonest businessmen
and bookies, he added. He said the worst remnants of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom
Party(SLFP) had now moved over to the UNP and there are rumblings
in the UNP that seniors had been sidelined. Commenting on his return to the SLFP which he had quit when his
elder sister President Chandrika Kumaratunga took command, he said
that he had re-joined on the invitation of the president. Regarding the UNP he said that there were dissidents who
charged that he had favored his sister against them when he was
the Speaker but the fact was that proroguing and dissolving
parliament was the president's prerogative and he had no authority
to violate the constitution. Bandaranaike who crossed over from the UNP on Tuesday to rejoin
SLFP have been in long running feud with his sister over the
control of the ruling party but their kinship returned normal
after the death of their mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world'
s first woman premier in 1960, on October 10 last year, the day
when the last parliamentary election was held. Enditem
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