National Languages Minister and TPA Leader Mano Ganesan today defended President Maithripala Sirisena whose weak language skills has drawn ridicule from many quarters on social media. 

A video of Sirisena's speech in the Philippines, in which he struggles to deliver a speech in English is currently doing rounds on social media drawing ridicule from Sirisena's critiques. 

In the speech, Sirisena even mispronounces the name of the leader of the host country, Rodrigo Duterte. 

However, defending Sirisena's poor command of English, Ganesan said, "Do you think that the President of Sri Lanka need to expressively pronounce Queen’s language equivalent to her subjects? I don’t think so." 

It is widely believed that Sirisena poor command of the English language is one of the main reasons for his hostility towards Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe whose first language is English. 

In a special statement after Wickremesinghe's removal in October last year, Sirisena said there were unbridgable cultural differences between himself and Wickremesinghe.