Dhaka is closely monitoring the development in Sri Lanka, a South Asian neighbour, where high voltage political drama unfolded when Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“Being a close door neighbor, we are closely following the political situation in Sri Lanka,” Bangladesh High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Riaz Hamidullah.
Rajapaksa and Sirisena both visited Bangladesh as president and Dhaka has close relations with the country.
Meanwhile, a Press Trust of India report quoting political analysts said Sirisena’s move to install Rajapaksa as the prime minister could lead to a constitutional crisis as the 19th amendment to the Constitution would not allow the sacking of Wickremesinghe as the premier without a majority.
Sirisena, who was Rajapaksa’s minister of health, broke away from him to contest the presidential elections.
Rajapaksa and Sirisena combined has only 95 seats and is short of a simple majority.
Wickremesinghe’s UNP has 106 seats on its own with just seven short of the majority. There was no immediate comment from Wickremesinghe or the UNP.
The unity government was formed in 2015 when Sirisena was elected President with Wickremesinghe’s support, ending a nearly decade-long rule by Rajapaksa.
Last week, it was reported that Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner the UNP of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to assassinate him and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former top defence ministry bureaucrat and brother of ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Another report from Reuters said a top Sri Lankan police official was arrested on Thursday over a suspected plot to kill President Maithripala Sirisena, police a spokesman said.
The alleged plot briefly threatened to cause tension between Sri Lanka and India, after an Indian newspaper report that Sirisena had accused India's intelligence services of involvement - a claim New Delhi and Colombo have both denied.