{"id":2297,"date":"2026-06-07T15:33:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/?p=2297"},"modified":"2026-06-07T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:33:39","slug":"sarath-weerasekera-warns-against-devolving-police-and-land-powers-to-northern-province","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/2026\/06\/07\/sarath-weerasekera-warns-against-devolving-police-and-land-powers-to-northern-province\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarath Weerasekera Warns Against Devolving Police and Land Powers to Northern Province"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Minister <strong>Sarath Weerasekera<\/strong> has stated that granting police and land powers to the Northern Provincial Council would amount to a \u201ctreasonous act,\u201d expressing confidence that President <strong>Anura Kumara Dissanayake<\/strong> will not proceed with such a move.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the media, Weerasekera said that holding Provincial Council elections would not be an issue; however, problems would arise if elections are conducted and powers related to police and land are devolved to the Northern Provincial Council. He emphasized that no previous President in Sri Lanka\u2019s history has implemented such a transfer of authority.<\/p>\n<p>He further argued that if police and land powers are devolved, the country could effectively move towards a federal system, which he claimed would undermine Sri Lanka\u2019s unitary state structure. According to him, such a change would be unacceptable and could be considered a betrayal of the state.<\/p>\n<p>Weerasekera also expressed confidence that the current President would continue the same approach as previous administrations in maintaining centralized control over key state powers. He warned that any attempt to devolve such powers would have serious constitutional and political consequences, stating that it would amount to a \u201ctreasonous\u201d act in his view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Minister Sarath Weerasekera has stated that granting police and land powers to the Northern Provincial Council would amount to a \u201ctreasonous act,\u201d expressing confidence that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will not proceed with such a move. Speaking to the media, Weerasekera said that holding Provincial Council elections would not be an issue; however, problems &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamilmail.lk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}