Thondaman's role in aborting Premadasa impeachment and Speaker Mohamed's perfidy

Let us listen to Nihal Seneviratne (former Secretary General of Parliament) to get Premadasa's reaction, He [the President] asked "Nihal have you seen this impeachment motion?" I replied, "which impeachment motion, Sir?" He replied saying Speaker Mohamed had sent him a few hours earlier a motion of impeachment against him. I was quite categorical and said that I had not seen it at all, which was the truth... I realized that the Speaker had sent him the motion by hand without showing it to me.

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As planned the Speaker addressed a letter to the President stating that he had accepted a motion of impeachment presented to him by more than half the number of MPs and therefore section 38 of the constitution was now brought into play.

This letter was brought by the President to the Cabinet which proceeded unanimously to declare their confidence in Premadasa. At this meeting Lalith and Premachandra who were Cabinet ministers at that time had also voted in favour of a confidence vote in the President though by this time they had affixed their signatures to the motion referred to by the Speaker.

Let us listen to Nihal Seneviratne (former Secretary General of Parliament) to get Premadasa's reaction, He [the President] asked "Nihal have you seen this impeachment motion?" I replied, "which impeachment motion, Sir?" He replied saying Speaker Mohamed had sent him a few hours earlier a motion of impeachment against him. I was quite categorical and said that I had not seen it at all, which was the truth... I realized that the Speaker had sent him the motion by hand without showing it to me."

The following day the President summoned all his party MPs to the Parliament building and spoke to them individually. Predictably most of them denied that they signed any such document or said that they were misled. Since the acceptance of the motion meant that the President was precluded from dissolving Parliament he used his right to prorogue Parliament and re-summoned it at a later date [September 21] thereby gaining time to reverse the impeachment process. In the meanwhile he, with his usual thoroughness, identified Mohamed as the "brains" behind the move and began a series of behind the scenes activities to "torpedo" the motion.