At least nine out of ten Sri Lankans have opined that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa should resign, and that the embattled Rajapaksa family should leave politics, according to a poll, held amidst the worst economic crisis that has hit the country.

As many as 89.6 per cent Sri Lankans believe that the entire Rajapaksa family should leave Sri Lankan politics, with 87.3 per cent supporting the demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa should also resign.

According to a poll by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, 89.7 per cent of those polled said that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa should resign.

Nearly 75 per cent of those surveyed believe the executive presidency should be abolished and more than half the country or 55 per cent want all 225 MPs to resign, said the Confidence in Democratic Governance Index.

According to the index carried out using a semi-structured questionnaire with 1,200 sample respondents from the four main ethnic communities, including men and women from both urban and rural localities in all districts, as many as 96.2 per cent Sri Lankans believe that all politicians should be audited time to time and all their unaccounted wealth should be confiscated by the State.

The poll has also found that 88 per cent of Sri Lankans have either been in a queue or had a family member stand in queues for essential items such as gas, fuel, milk powder, and fertiliser over the past one month.

The poll said that 90 per cent of Sri Lankans have had their income or their family's income affected as a result of the current economic turmoil, the worst since the country's independence from Britain in 1948. About 58 per cent of those surveyed believe that the return of the nation's economy to normalcy will take a long time, said the poll conducted between April 19 and 25.

The crisis is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which has meant that the country cannot afford to pay for imports of staple foods and fuel, leading to acute shortages and very high prices.

The Index (Wave 2) showed that only two per cent of those polled believed Sri Lanka's economic woes could be attributed to the current world economic situation, with 90 per cent attributing the crisis to political reasons.