May 14, 2018, at 06:43 pm
On April 4, 2018, Parliament comfortably defeated a No-Confidence Motion brought by the Joint Opposition group led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Of the 225 Members of Parliament (MPs), 122 MPs – 104 of the United National Party (UNP), 16 of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and one each of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) – voted against the No-Confidence Motion. 76 MPs – 70 of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and six of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) – voted in support of the No-Confidence Motion. Another 26 MPs including 25 SLFP MPs and one MP of the UNP absented themselves from the House during the vote. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, a UNP MP, did not vote. Significantly, it was the first No-Confidence Motion brought against the current National Unity Government, formed on August 20, 2015.