Former President Rajapaksa took oath as the premier in the presence of current President Sirisena at the Presidential Secretariat after his party abruptly quit the ruling coalition. Rajapaksa replaces Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The shocking overturn came after Sirisena’s broader political front United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) made an abrupt announcement about its decision to quit the current unity government with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP).
The unity government had come to power in 2015 after a decade-long rule by Rajapaksa, when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremsinghe’s support.
Sirisena was earlier Rajapaksa's minister of health but he had broken away from him to contest the presidential elections.
Citing political analysts, news agency PTI reported that Sirisena's move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority.
Political analysts said Rajapaksa and Sirisena combine has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority. Wickremesinghe's UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority, the agency reported.
President Sirisena's party withdrew from the ruling coalition after simmering tensions between him and Wickremesinghe. It was reported that last week Sirisena had accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The unity government was thrown into a crisis after Rajapaksa's new party pulled off a stunning victory in local elections in February seen as a referendum on the ruling alliance.
(With inputs from agencies)