Sri Lanka’s parliament on Friday passed a constitutional amendment aimed at trimming presidential powers, beefing up anti-corruption safeguards, and helping to find a way out of the country’s worst financial crisis since independence.
The amendment was passed with the required two-thirds majority.
Sri Lanka has struggled for months to find enough dollars to pay for essential imports such as fuel, food, cooking gas, and medicine. Many Sri Lankans blame former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa for implementing multiple failed policies including tax cuts, a now-reversed ban on chemical fertilizers, and delays in seeking International Monetary Fund assistance that resulted in the country defaulting on its foreign debt for the first time in history.
