The Sri Lankan Parliament will on Wednesday vote on a no-confidence motion that the Opposition has moved against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The country’s Parliament is currently debating the motion, AP reported.
Wickremesinghe needs 113 votes in the 225-member Parliament to defeat the motion.
The Opposition has jointly accused the prime minister of appointing a foreigner as the central bank governor, who is now believed to be involved in an alleged scam in the bond market. Allegations against Wickremesinghe include financial mismanagement, an economic slowdown and failure to check communal clashes in Kandy in March.
President Maithripala Sirisena’s party, which is part of the ruling alliance, has said it would vote against Wickremesinghe. Without support from Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the coalition led by Wickremesinghe’s United National Party has only 107 members in Parliament, which is short of the majority mark.
The motion needs to be adopted with a two-thirds majority for the elections to be called prematurely.
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