COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The speaker of Sri Lanka's Parliament has asked the country's president to safeguard the rights of the sacked prime minister amid a deepening political crisis in the South Asian island nation.
Speaker Karu Jayasuriya said in a letter to President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday that the continued suspension of Parliament would have "serious and undesirable consequences."
Sirisena dismissed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet on Friday and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa. Wickremesinghe has asserted that he could prove his majority support in Parliament.
On Saturday, Sirisena suspended Parliament in an apparent move to give Rajapaksa time to try to muster enough support to survive any no-confidence vote.
