About: http://data.cimple.eu/news-article/ab5611c7107e3afb16067eb2a37daadeec420ea3a852acdd38c42400     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : schema:NewsArticle, within Data Space : data.cimple.eu associated with source document(s)

AttributesValues
rdf:type
schema:articleBody
  • Sri Lanka's ruling party took a clear lead Thursday in early results from parliamentary elections in which the dominant Rajapaksa family hope to strengthen their grip on power. Counting in the island's south showed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) with 72 percent of the vote. Since the prime minister's younger brother Gotabaya won a presidential election in November, Sri Lankans have largely embraced the family's populist platform. The policy programme emerged from a wave of nationalist sentiment that followed Easter bombings in 2019 by Muslim radicals which killed 279 people. The brothers are viewed as heroes by the country's Sinhalese majority for orchestrating a ruthless military campaign to end a decades-long Tamil separatist war in 2009 under the leadership of Mahinda. The Rajapaksa family is now seeking to expand its mandate with Wednesday's legislative polls. Early results on Thursday from postal ballot counts showed the main opposition SJB gleaned just 13 percent of the vote, while the leftist JJB party had eight percent and former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) just four. Final results for the coronavirus-delayed election were expected late Thursday. Private surveys have projected Rajapaksa's party will take between 130 and 135 seats in the 225-member parliament, short of a two-thirds super-majority it needs to roll back constitutional changes made by the previous administration that limit the president's powers. "We are confident of getting two thirds, but even if we don't get it at the polls, there are ways of getting it through parliament," the prime minister said Wednesday. The party could lure rival legislators to back the changes despite an anti-defection law, political commentator Victor Ivan said. Wednesday's election -- postponed twice due to the epidemic and held with strict social distancing measures -- saw a 70 percent turnout from the 16 million-strong electorate. Huge economic challenges await the new parliament. On Wednesday, official figures showed economic growth fell 1.6 percent in the first quarter of this year. aj/tw/axn/fox
schema:headline
  • Rajapaksa party on course for big Sri Lanka election win
schema:mentions
schema:author
schema:datePublished
http://data.cimple...sPoliticalLeaning
http://data.cimple...logy#hasSentiment
http://data.cimple...readability_score
http://data.cimple...tology#hasEmotion
Faceted Search & Find service v1.16.115 as of Oct 09 2023


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3238 as of Jul 16 2024, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-musl), Single-Server Edition (126 GB total memory, 2 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2025 OpenLink Software