By Saman Indrajith

The government was conspiring to remove Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe as the Governor of the Central Bank and replace him with a henchman of the government, Opposition Leader, Sajith Premadasa told Parliament, yesterday.Premadasa said that on Wednesday, Dr. Weerasinghe had been asked to make a presentation in parliament on the state of the economy.

“There must be some kind of agreement among ourselves about the direction the economy should take. However, what is more important is to have an agreement among the President, the Prime Minister, the government and the Governor of the Central Bank. During that presentation, we saw that a lot of government MPs were making various insinuations about the Governor,” Premadasa said.

The Opposition Leader said that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had requested Dr. Weerasinghe to take over as the Governor of the Central Bank.

“Dr. Weerasinghe didn’t ask for the job. We asked a man who was living well in Australia to come and help us. Both Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy and Dr. Weerasinghe are ideal for the job. This was the right choice. The Secretary to the Ministry of Finance is also good. However, now some elements are using a few MPs to make various accusations against Dr. Weerasinghe. They are saying Dr. Weerasinghe is a dual citizen. On Thursday, a MP took 20 minutes of the time allocated for the government and insinuated that Dr. Weerasinghe was the reason why Sri Lanka went bankrupt. Of course, the accusation was not made directly,” the Opposition Leader said.

Premadasa said such utterances were a part of a concerted conspiracy to slander Dr. Weerasinghe. He warned that this was a bad omen and Dr. Weerasinghe’s departure would have a devastating impact on the country.

“The government talks about the need to start an all-party government. Its MPs accuse the opposition of playing politics. However, when we see what the government is up to. They are trying to send Dr. Weerasinghe back to Australia and appoint a henchman. Because of things like this, we can’t even imagine forming an all-party government with you,” he said.

During the meeting with Dr. Weerasinghe, the government MPs did not allow SJB MPs, Lakshman Kiriella and Dr. Harsha de Silva to ask questions, the Opposition Leader said.

“The MPs were behaving like hooligans. Dr. de Silva left the meeting. We were embarrassed. Don’t try to get rid of Dr. Weerasinghe through conspiracies. Don’t try to deny this. To rebuild the country, there needs to be some consensus within the government,” he said.

Meanwhile, former Minister of Finance Mohammad Ali Sabry said that he had been made the Finance Minister at a time when no one was willing to take up the job. He said that it was under his tenure that the negotiations with the IMF had started.

“At that time, we had to decide whether to spend everything we had on paying off foreign debts or spend the little we had on providing basic necessities to the people. The decision was taken after discussing with all. I was the finance Minister then. When the Central bank suggested we default, I spoke with the then President twice. We spoke to experts, local and foreign. I also spoke to Dr. Harsha de Silva . We had to pay 200 million US dollars. The Treasury had 37,000 dollars. We had to pay 500 million dollars to pay for essentials. Are we paying for essentials or are we servicing debt? I am willing to take responsibility,” he said.