The no-confidence motion moved by the opposition against the government of Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated with a 46 vote majority after a 12-hour debate.

The voting for the motion went in support of Wickremesinghe with 122 legislators backing him as opposite to the 76 votes of MPs to remove him. Out of the total house strength, twenty six members of parliament were absent from the voting process.

The no-confidence motion was at first initiated by the Joint Opposition group in the parliament led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

As a result of this move, there were only 55 opposition MPs which includes four members from the ruling SLFP, who signed the document before being handed over to the speaker asking for the no-confidence vote. More interestingly, Rajapaksa did not sign the document.

Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) has got 107 MPs in the 225-member parliament and the party leads the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG). The UNP relied mostly on the backing of its allies from the joint UNFGG coalition to survive the vote.

A total of 113 MPs support was needed for Wickremesinghe to survive the no-confidence motion.

As per the report from the capital, Colombo, the prime minister might have survived the vote but “the government has had a crippling blow, weakened by this entire process.

“The fractionalism that has crept in has been building up over the last three years, since the national unity government of the president’s and the prime minister’s parties came together,” she added.

“At the root of this no-confidence motion were divisions capitalised on by the joint opposition.”

At the end of Wednesday’s debate in the Parliament, Wickremesinghe thanked all of his supporters and promised changes.

Wickremesinghe has got the job to heal the cracks in the current ruling coalition in the wake of the poor showing in the recent local government elections.

His caliber has been weakened due to the rift estabilished at the highest levels of the coalition between the UNP and the SLFP, which choose to fight the local elections separately, in which they were trounced by the Rajapaksa-backed opposition parties.

Wickremesinghe has been the leader of the UNP for about 24 years and is the longest-serving leader in the history of the centre-right party of Sri Lanka.

Owing to his growing unpopularity in rural electorates, dominated by Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe did not choose to contest the 2010 and 2014 presidential elections, choosing to back a common candidate instead.

Sri Lanka is an island nation ruled by a system as democratic republic and a unitary state which is governed by a semi-presidential system, along with a mixture of a presidential system and also parliamentary system.

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