Sri Lanka's main Muslim leader has accused the government of implicating him in a sex scandal to secure his vote while a Buddhist monk alleged that a fellow clergyman-legislator had been abducted.
Muslim leader Rauf Hakeem in a special address to parliament said the ruling party had fabricated a sex scandal to pressure his group into supporting the minority government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
"Certain papers have published news items relating to an illicit affair allegedly by me," Hakeem told the assembly. "It is my contention that it is fabricated to bring disrepute to me and to my party and bring pressure to vote for the government."
State-run newspapers and television have reported an affair between the Muslim leader and a married woman, who later told a private channel she was forced into implicating Hakeen to secure his support for a crucial vote in parliament.
Kumaratunga's Marxist-backed Freedom Alliance narrowly lost the election for speaker of parliament last month after three rounds of voting that went on for nearly 10 hours.
When parliament met Tuesday, the government and main opposition United National Party agreed to elect the deputy speaker and the chairman of committees without a vote that could have been bruising for both.
But Buddhist monk legislator Aparekke Pannananda said his fellow MP Kathaluwe Rathanaseeha had been abducted by unknown people overnight to prevent him from casting his vote at a possible election for deputy speaker.
The monks were among nine elected from the all-clergy National Heritage Party, but the two have broken ranks to support the ruling party.
In another development, a member of Hakeem's Sri Lanka Muslim Congress defected to the government Tuesday, but under anti-defection laws he would have only three months in parliament before his party has the right to sack him.
Kumaratunga's Freedom Alliance has been desperate to raise its support since the April 2 parliamentary elections as it is seven seats short of a simple majority in the 225-member house.