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Confusing, chaotic, comical, frustrating and even surreal are some of the words that come to mind when describing this week’s extraordinary Parliament sessions that occurred in the backdrop of mass scale protests calling on the President and his Government to step down.

This week’s Parliament proceeded with just four Cabinet Ministers after the entire Cabinet except the Premier resigned on Sunday following street protests spurred on by the crippling economic crisis. Even the status of those four was mired in confusion on Tuesday (5) when reports emerged that newly appointed Finance Minister Ali Sabry had resigned less than 24 hours after taking oaths. A Government clearly in disarray waited until Friday to tell Parliament and the country that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had refused to accept his resignation letter.  

Though it may still have the numbers to maintain a parliamentary majority, the SLPP emerged this week with its previous invulnerability seriously shaken. It lost its coveted 2/3 majority when more than 40 members proclaimed on Tuesday that they would sit as independents. Accordingly, 10 SLPP MPs led by Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, the 14 Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) MPs led by former President Maithripala Sirisena, 15 MPs from the SLPP’s coalition partners and two MPs representing the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) will sit independently. All Ceylon Makkal Congress (SLMC) MP S. M. M. Muszhaaraff, who had supported the Government since the 20th Amendment, also claimed he would function as an independent.

Ahila Ilankai Thamil Congress (AITC) Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam perhaps described the prevailing situation best when he told Parliament that the current legislature is outdated. “What we have within this House is not reflected outside this house, or rather, what is reflected outside this House is not reflected in this House, because this House is two years old. This House is outdated, because the people who voted members into this House feel disenfranchised.”

With Opposition MPs noting the pointlessness of proceeding with the week’s scheduled agenda given the current situation, Parliament held a two-day debate on the present situation on Wednesday and Thursday. Those who expected some clarity to emerge from this debate would have been disappointed as most speakers spent their allotted time blaming the other side for getting the country into the current crisis.

In between, there were plenty of heated arguments and near physical violence. The SJB held a protest inside the well of the chamber, bringing the #GotaGoHome hashtag into Parliament itself, though what they ultimately achieved, beyond getting a few more seconds of airtime on the nightly news, remains a mystery. A brawl between Puttalam district MPs Hector Appuhamy of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and Chinthaka Mayadunne of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) was only avoided when seniors from both parties stepped in between them. On Friday, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena ejected Badulla District MPs Chaminda Wijesiri (SJB) and Tissa Kuttiaarachchi (SLPP) from the chambers for unruly conduct. On several occasions this week, Parliament sittings had to be briefly suspended owing to heated arguments between MPs. The incidents portend more turbulent days ahead for Parliament with both sides stubbornly refusing to compromise.

With Chief Opposition Whip Johnston Fernando insisting that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will not resign under any circumstances and Opposition parties setting his resignation as a precondition for any talk of an interim administration, both sides have decided to dig in. The SJB finally made a move on Friday by announcing that it had started collecting signatures for a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the Government. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa also said his party intended to introduce proposals to abolish the Executive Presidency.

“If the Government side claims that the reality on the ground is that the President need not resign, I tell them again to heed the voice of the people. The people’s call is that not only the President, but this entire Government should leave. This is the people’s request, but this group is trying to go against it,” Mr Premadasa said, speaking during the debate on the report on the country’s economic situation compiled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Opposition Leader called on the Government to “lead, follow or get out of the way.” If the Government does not do that, he said the Opposition would be forced to take constitutional measures to remove it through an NCM.

It is the responsibility of the President to either go before the people to tell whether he is resigning or not. If he does not intend to resign, then he must explain to the people how he intends to resolve the present crisis and bring relief to the people, United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said.

He called on the President to appoint a new Cabinet which should then seek a vote of confidence from Parliament to proceed. He also asked the Government to refrain from deploying the military to maintain order. “The police is responsible for civil power. It’s only if the civil power breaks down that the army is called. The civil power has not broken down in this country.”

Mr Wickremesinghe also proposed that Parliament bring in a resolution to take over public finance under Article 148 of the Constitution. Cabinet has failed to put the country’s finances in order. As such, the legislature must take over those powers, he stressed.

The country’s political leadership is chiefly responsible for the crisis to get to the point it is today, National Peoples’ Power (NPP) MP Vijitha Herath argued. There is nothing wrong in approaching the IMF to extend the period to pay off the country’s debts and obtain assistance on debt restructuring. But obtaining an IMF bailout will only plunge the country’s economy further into the abyss, Mr Herath warned. “We have obtained IMF bailouts on 16 occasions. Has the country’s economy recovered?”

The NPP meanwhile, went further than the SJB by proposing that the President be impeached if he refuses to go.

The first step towards ending the present economic crisis is for the President to heed the calls from Sri Lankans within the country and abroad and step down, Mr Herath said. “It is pointless to discuss any potential solution without the President first stepping down. Even Government MPs privately tell us that this is the best solution, but the President refuses to budge. If that’s the case, we have the solution in this House. We should come together and draft an impeachment motion against him.”

State Minister Shehan Semasinghe meanwhile, accused the Opposition of instigating violent protests that have again hit the vital tourism industry that was only just recovering from the effects of the COVID pandemic.

Even if a new Government were to come to power, it too will face the same situation, he warned. He also dismissed claims by some in the Opposition that the IMF may decline to support Sri Lanka. “The reason why the draft of the IMF report was not tabled in Parliament until now was because there were certain parts in the report to which the Government objected and we conveyed those objections to the IMF. It was only after both sides agreed on a final draft that we have now tabled the report and are debating it.”

Finance Minister Ali Sabry meanwhile, conceded that there were certain things that the Government “should have foreseen that would have prevented this crisis from escalating to where it is now.”

The Government did not foresee when it provided large scale tax reductions that the COVID pandemic would decimate tourism revenues, but once it happened, those tax reductions should have been reconsidered. “We now face the prospect of deciding whether to default on our debt repayments to end the queues that our people are suffering in. We can’t arbitrarily default on our debt repayments. That will have dangerous consequences. The only choice before us is to restructure those debts,” Mr Sabry said.

Despite calls from the Opposition urging Parliament to reconvene next week before the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, it was decided at the party leaders’ meeting on Friday that it will only reconvene after the New Year, on April 19. A lot could happen before then.