A Month Without a Debate: The No-Confidence Motion Against the Speaker Has Become a Test of Parliament Itself

On 9 October 2026, a group of Opposition MPs walked into the office of the Secretary General of Parliament, Kushani Rohanadeera, and handed over a motion of no confidence in the Speaker, Dr Jagath Wickramaratne. According to the Daily Mirror, Ada Derana and News 1st, the motion carried the signatures of 44 MPs and set out about 50 allegations. Its central charge, as reported by those outlets, is that the Speaker is unfit to hold the office because of partisan and undemocratic conduct in running the House.

More than a month later, Parliament has still not debated it. On 10 November, The Morning reported that the Opposition’s parliamentary group would meet on 11 November to decide what to do next, after what the Chief Opposition Whip, Gayantha Karunatilleka, described as the government’s continued refusal to allow a debate. On 6 November, the Deputy Speaker told the House that five privilege questions raised by Opposition MPs about the handling of the motion, including one from the Leader of the Opposition, Sajith Premadasa, had been rejected.

Lanka Witness takes no view on whether the Speaker should stay or go. The allegations are allegations, and the Speaker is entitled to answer them. But the question of whether a motion signed by 44 elected members reaches the floor of Parliament is not a private quarrel between parties. It goes to the heart of how Sri Lanka’s legislature holds its own office-holders to account, and it is a question on which the National People’s Power government will be judged by its own standards.

What the motion says

The full motion has been published as a PDF linked from Ada Derana’s report, but most public reporting has focused on a handful of its allegations. The Daily Mirror reported on 9 October that the charges include granting privileges to the Speaker’s personal secretary outside established procedures, and acting partially on matters relating to parliamentary sittings. A 1 November editorial in The Morning listed further allegations, including the use of an additional official residence, running a media unit without Cabinet approval, and the way Opposition motions have been handled.

According to The Morning’s report of 13 October, the motion cites alleged breaches of a wide range of laws and rules: the Constitution, the Anti-Corruption Act No. 9 of 2023, the Offences Against Public Property Act, the Penal Code, the Right to Information Act, the Code of Conduct for MPs and the Standing Orders of Parliament. The signatories were drawn from the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, the New Democratic Front and independent groups. News 1st named Deputy Opposition Chief Whip Ajith P. Perera, Tamil Progressive Alliance leader Mano Ganesan, SLMC general secretary Nizam Kariapper, and New Democratic Front MPs Ravi Karunanayake, Dilip Wedaarachchi, Chaminda Wijesiri and Varuna Liyanage among those present at the handover.

These are serious-sounding charges, but none of them has been tested. Lanka Witness has not seen evidence establishing any of them, and the Opposition has not, as far as the public record shows, produced documents proving them. It is also worth noting that some of the parties that signed the motion governed Sri Lanka for long periods and were themselves accused of using Parliament’s machinery for partisan ends. That history does not disqualify their complaint, but it is a reason to judge the motion on evidence, not on who signed it.

How a motion became stuck

The more troubling story is procedural. According to The Morning’s 1 November editorial, the Leader of the House, Bimal Rathnayake, first said the government was ready to take up the motion without delay. That position changed. At a meeting of party leaders on 23 October, chaired by the Speaker himself, the government and the Speaker took the view that there was no need to seek the Attorney General’s opinion on the motion, and that the Opposition should amend and resubmit its allegations, the editorial reported.

The stated ground for amendment was that some of the charges were sub judice, meaning they concern matters before the courts. On 6 November, Deputy Speaker Rizvie Salih told Parliament, according to The Morning, that the Committee on Parliamentary Business had allowed the Opposition to remove matters considered sub judice, but that no amended motion had been submitted within the time allowed. He also ruled that the five privilege questions did not show a prima facie breach of privilege, and that matters of procedure, the Order Book and scheduling are not questions of privilege.

The Opposition’s position is the opposite. Karunatilleka told The Morning that the Opposition would not amend the motion, withdraw it, or table a new one. With evident sarcasm, he offered only one change: removing the word Honourable before the word Speaker. The Morning’s editorial reported that the Opposition says legal experts it consulted found no basis for the sub judice objection, and that the motion was never referred to the Attorney General despite what the Opposition describes as an earlier understanding. The same editorial reported that a debate on a so-called revised motion was listed for 3 November, even though, according to the Opposition, no revised motion exists.

The problem of the judge in his own cause

At the centre of this dispute is an old principle of fairness: no one should be a judge in their own cause. The Committee on Parliamentary Business, which decides how and when business comes before the House, is chaired by the Speaker. The Morning’s editorial made the point that an accused Speaker presiding over the body deciding the fate of a motion against him damages the rights of the Opposition. That is an editorial view, and Lanka Witness presents it as such. But it is a reasonable concern, and one that any fair-minded observer would share.

There may be good procedural reasons why a Speaker chairs that committee in normal times. These are not normal times. When the Speaker himself is the subject of a motion, best practice in parliamentary democracies is for the Speaker to step away from every decision about that motion, and for the Deputy Speaker or another presiding officer to take those decisions in public, with written reasons. The public record does not show that this has happened in full. The government has not explained why it accepted the Speaker chairing the 23 October meeting at which the path of the motion was decided.

The sub judice argument also needs to be tested openly. If certain allegations concern cases now before the courts, Parliament is right to be careful. But a sub judice concern about some of 50 allegations is normally a reason to exclude those specific items from debate, not a reason to keep the whole motion off the Order Paper. If the government believes the entire motion is defective, it should publish the legal advice it relies on. If it has no such advice, the simplest course is the one the Opposition says was originally agreed: ask the Attorney General, and publish the answer.

The government’s own yardstick

The NPP came to power promising to clean up politics and restore public trust in institutions. Part of that promise was a new culture in Parliament. That makes its handling of this motion more significant than it might be for another government.

The government’s first Speaker in this Parliament, Asoka Ranwala, stepped down in December 2024, within weeks of taking office, amid questions about his academic credentials, as The Morning’s editorial recalled. At the time, his resignation was widely presented as evidence that the new government would not protect its own. The way the current motion is handled will show whether that standard still applies when the cost of applying it is higher.

So far, the government’s public position has been cautious. On 13 October, NPP General Secretary Dr Nihal Abeysinghe told The Morning that the party would support the Speaker because the charges were only allegations, that it might reconsider if investigations substantiated them, and that the party had not yet discussed the matter internally. That is a defensible position on the merits. It is not an answer to the procedural question. Supporting the Speaker in a vote is one thing. Preventing the vote from taking place is another.

The NPP holds a commanding majority in Parliament. If the charges are weak, the government has every reason to let the motion be debated, answer each allegation on the record, and defeat it by a large margin. A transparent debate would protect the Speaker more effectively than a procedural dispute that has now lasted more than a month. The longer the delay continues, the more the public will suspect that the government fears what a debate would reveal, whether or not that suspicion is fair.

Why this matters beyond Colombo

For overseas Sri Lankans, human rights bodies and foreign governments, the internal rules of Parliament can seem remote. They should not. The Speaker controls which questions are allowed, which motions reach the floor, how long debates last and how privilege complaints are handled. In a Parliament where one party holds more than two-thirds of the seats, the Speaker’s impartiality is one of the few institutional protections left for minority parties, including Tamil and Muslim representatives, and for the voters they represent.

This is also happening at a sensitive moment. Parliament is about to receive the 2027 Budget, and it is considering two major security bills that rights groups and United Nations experts have criticised. Opposition MPs have complained about how privilege questions are being handled. If the Opposition comes to believe that the presiding officer is not neutral, the quality of scrutiny on every one of those issues will suffer.

Fairness requires saying that the Opposition also has choices. It could narrow its motion to the allegations it can document, publish its evidence, and remove any items that are truly before the courts without conceding its core case. Its refusal to change a single word may be principled, but it also hands the government a procedural reason to delay. Both sides could end the stalemate tomorrow.

What should happen now

Lanka Witness believes four steps would resolve this dispute in a way that protects Parliament, whatever the outcome for the Speaker. First, the Speaker should formally step aside from every decision concerning the motion, including in the Committee on Parliamentary Business. Second, the government should seek and publish the Attorney General’s opinion on the sub judice question. Third, the Opposition should publish the evidence supporting its main allegations, so that the public can judge them. Fourth, Parliament should fix a date for the debate and keep to it.

None of this requires new laws. It requires the political will to apply the standard of openness that the NPP promised when it asked voters for a new kind of politics. A government confident in its Speaker should have nothing to fear from a debate.