The election will end the power vacuum about a week after the previous president, Rajapaksa, left the country for Singapore
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has held the post of interim president since last week after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country, was elected by lawmakers as the new president on Wednesday, despite protesters’ demands to tender his resignation.
Wickremesinghe received 134 votes, beating the other two candidates, former Education Minister Dullas Alahapperume and leftist National People’s Power MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who received 82 and three support respectively, according to the Sri Lankan newspaper ‘Daily Spiegel’. .
The vote came about a week after Rajapaksa left the country for Singapore, with an earlier stop in the Maldives, amid mass protests demanding his resignation over the very serious economic and social crisis the island is experiencing.
Wickremesinghe was sworn in as interim president on Friday after being elected by Rajapaksa himself, after he assured that he would step down once an inclusive government is formed after the president’s resignation, which has not calmed the minds of protesters, who also ask the prime minister to leave his post.
Rajapaksa relented after months of protests over rising prices, lack of food, medicine and fuel, leaving the small Asian island in its worst economic crisis since it gained independence from British colonial rule. The popular revolution has toppled the Rajapaksa family after Gotabaya forced his brother Mahinda to resign as prime minister in early May in an attempt to end protests.
Source: La Verdad
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