Sri Lankan lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to scrap their pensions on Tuesday, delivering on a campaign promise that the ruling Marxist-leaning government made after public anger over the country’s economic collapse, the Associated Press reported.
The bill passed in Sri Lanka’s House of Representatives on Tuesday by 154 votes in a 225-member chamber, with only two legislators voting against it and the rest of the lawmakers not present during the vote, according to the AP. Under the new law, lawmakers’ pensions will no longer be paid to anyone who already receives the benefit or who qualifies for it, the AP said.
The push for the change is tied directly to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s political platform. The AP reported that Dissanayake, who took office in 2024, pledged during his election campaign to end the practice of lawmakers receiving pensions after serving a set term.
The AP also said the government had previously moved to abolish perks for former presidents in September, framing the earlier step as a response to public demand. Those changes included the removal of state funding for housing, allowances, pensions and transport, and the scrapping of an office and staff for former presidents and their widows, the AP reported. The AP said there are five living past presidents and a widow.
In the House, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara presented the bill, telling lawmakers that an election promise had been fulfilled and that lawmakers had no moral right to receive a pension while the country was struggling to emerge from what the AP described as its worst economic crisis. The AP reported that Dissanayake won office riding on resentment against politicians accused of being responsible for the 2022 downturn.
Sri Lanka declared bankruptcy in April 2022, with more than $83 billion in debt, according to the AP. More than half of that debt was owed to foreign creditors, the AP reported, and Sri Lanka later sought an International Monetary Fund program that approved a $2.9 billion, four-year bailout package in 2023 that required restructuring.
The AP reported that Sri Lanka said it has concluded its debt restructuring process after reaching agreements with bilateral and multilateral creditors and private bondholders, and that it is seeking $17 billion in debt-service relief. The broader crisis was driven, the AP said, by economic mismanagement, compounded by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and by the 2019 terrorism attacks that devastated tourism, alongside disruptions that reduced remittance flows from Sri Lankans working abroad.