Sri Lankan shares plunge as Buddhist leaders call for resignation

COLOMBO: The stock market in Sri Lanka halted trading Monday after a nearly 13% drop, as the island’s beleaguered government faces new pressure from influential Buddhist leaders to resign.

The country’s 22 million residents are suffering from the worst economic crisis since 1948, with months of regular blackouts and severe food and fuel shortages.

The Colombo stock exchange resumed trading Monday after a two-week hiatus during which the government raised interest rates and defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt.

Trading was halted and suspended for the day, with the local S&P index down 12.6% following a frenzied market sell-off.

Equities had lost nearly 40% of their value since January, and the local currency had lost nearly 40% against the dollar.

Meanwhile, top Buddhist clerics joined a growing chorus of former allies calling for the government’s resignation.

“The country is fast becoming a failed state,” said senior monk Medagama Dhammananda in Kandy.

To “pull the country out of this crisis,” Dhammananda said he and other Buddhist leaders had petitioned President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s brother and head of Sri Lanka’s powerful ruling family, would have to resign.

Thousands of protesters camped outside Gotabaya’s seafront office in Colombo for over two weeks.

The two men were adored before the crisis for putting an end to a decades-long ethnic civil war against the Tamil Tigers.

The Buddhist clergy’s rebuke on Monday is the latest public departure of former Rajapaksa allies.

The Rajapaksas have been urged to resign by business leaders and a former cabinet minister in recent weeks.

The coronavirus pandemic hit Sri Lanka hard after tourism and remittances were hit hard.

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