{"id":184918,"date":"2017-11-28T14:05:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T08:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=184918"},"modified":"2017-11-28T21:47:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T16:17:40","slug":"cbk-calls-sirisena-spineless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/cbk-calls-sirisena-spineless\/","title":{"rendered":"CBK Calls Sirisena &#8216;Spineless&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former president <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Chandrika+Kumaratunga\">Chandrika Kumaratunga<\/a> in a clear reference to incumbent president <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Maithripala+Sirisena\">Maithripala Sirisena<\/a> declared that the country needs leaders with backbones.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/chandrika-kumaratunga.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-117647\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/chandrika-kumaratunga.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"285\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/chandrika-kumaratunga.jpg 285w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/chandrika-kumaratunga-213x300.jpg 213w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 285px) 100vw, 285px\" \/><\/a>Speaking at an event in Veyangoda, the former president, said that there should be a philosophy for the rulers to develop the country, a clear programme and leaders who have the backbone to implement it.<\/p>\n<p>Sources close to her told Colombo Telegraph that she was referring to Maithripala Sirisena.<\/p>\n<p>These comments come in the wake of a SLFP Central Committee meeting where Kumaratunga came in for a lot of flak. Kumaratunga expressed opposition to a proposal for the party to form an alliance with the Joint Opposition (JO) to contest the forthcoming local government elections, asking how the party could work with rogues. The question was then posed to her whether there were no rogues during her tenure as President.<\/p>\n<p>Kumaratunga was instrumental in persuading Sirisena to contest the 2015 presidential election as the &#8216;common candidate&#8217; and at the time claimed that Sirisena was the only person in the Mahinda Rajapaksa cabinet who was not corrupt. Kumaratunga did not reiterate this claim when Sirisena gave cabinet portfolios to several ministers of the Rajapaksa cabinet and neither did she raise objection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":179339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2186,1,2375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-featured-news","category-news","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>CBK Calls Sirisena &#039;Spineless&#039; - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/cbk-calls-sirisena-spineless\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CBK Calls Sirisena &#039;Spineless&#039; - 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