When Rajapaksa was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s seventh president on Monday, he said he would form his own government. AD“I am the executive president of this country. I will not hesitate to use my executive power for the benefit of the country,” Rajapaksa said. The president can appoint or fire ministers only on the advice of the prime minister — whom the president has no power to remove — and can’t hold any ministry portfolios. A U.N. report said some 40,000 Tamil civilians may have died in the final months of the fighting in 2009.

Source: Washington Post November 19, 2019 09:15 UTC