Sri Lankan prime minister sworn in as president after predecessor’s resignation
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s interim president Friday and will serve until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after mass protests over the country’s economic collapse forced him from office.
The speaker of Sri Lanka’s Parliament said that Rajapaksa resigned as president effective Thursday and that lawmakers would convene Saturday to choose a new leader. Their choice would serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term ending in 2024, said Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana. He promised a swift and transparent process that should be done within a week.
The new president could appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament. With Rajapaksa out, pressure on Wickremesinghe was rising.
Wickremesinghe said in a televised statement said that in his short term as acting president, he would initiate steps to change the constitution to clip presidential powers and strengthen Parliament. He also said he would restore law and order and take legal action against “insurgents.”
Referring to clashes near Parliament on Wednesday night, during which many soldiers were reportedly injured, Wickremesinghe said true protesters would not get involved in such actions.
“There is a big difference between protesters and insurgents. We will take legal action against insurgents,” he said.
Sri Lanka’s embattled president has left the Maldives after fleeing his own country amid an economic collapse and protests demanding that he resign.
Opponents had viewed Wickremesinghe’s appointment as prime minister in May as alleviating pressure on Rajapaksa to resign. He became acting president when Rajapaksa fled Sri Lanka on Wednesday.
Rajapaksa arrived in Singapore on Thursday, and his resignation became official on that date. The prime minister’s office said Wickremesinghe was sworn in Friday as interim president before Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya.
Sri Lanka has run short of money to pay for imports of basic necessities such as food, fertilizer, medicine and fuel, to the despair of its 22 million people. Its rapid economic decline has been all the more shocking because, before this crisis, the economy had been expanding, with a growing, comfortable middle class.
Protest leader Jeewantha Peiris, a Roman Catholic priest, said demonstrators were “happy because we have come through a hard journey.”
The president of Sri Lanka fled, days after protesters stormed his home and office and the official residence of his prime minister amid a three-month economic crisis.
Protesters cooked and distributed milk rice — a food Sri Lankans enjoy to celebrate victories — after Rajapaksa’s resignation. At the main protest site in front of the president’s office in Colombo, people welcomed his resignation but insisted that Wickremesinghe also should step aside.
“I am happy that Gotabaya has finally left. He should have resigned earlier, without causing much problems,” Velayuthan Pillai, 73, a retired bank employee, said as patriotic songs were blaring from loudspeakers.
But he added that “Ranil is a supporter of Gotabaya and other Rajapaksas. He was helping them. He also must go.”
The capital regained a tenuous calm after protesters who had occupied government buildings retreated Thursday. But with the political opposition in Parliament fractured, a solution to Sri Lanka’s many woes seemed no closer.
The country remains a powder keg, and the military warned Thursday that it had powers to respond in case of chaos — a message some found concerning.
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Sri Lanka is seeking help from the International Monetary Fund and other creditors, but its finances are so poor that obtaining a bailout has proved difficult, Wickremesinghe recently said.
The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful political family of siphoning money from government coffers for years and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but Rajapaksa acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s meltdown.
Maduka Iroshan, 26, a university student and protester, said he was “thrilled” that Rajapaksa had quit, because he “ruined the dreams of the young generation.”
Months of protests reached a frenzied peak over the weekend when demonstrators stormed the president’s home and office and the official residence of Wickremesinghe, the prime minister. On Wednesday, they seized Wickremesinghe’s office.
With one brother president, another prime minister and three more family members Cabinet ministers, it appeared that the Rajapaksa clan had consolidated its grip on power in Sri Lanka. But it is now unraveling.
Images of protesters inside the buildings — lounging on elegant sofas and beds, posing at officials’ desks and touring the opulent settings — captured the world’s attention.
The demonstrators initially vowed to stay until a new government was in place, but they shifted tactics Thursday, apparently concerned that an escalation in violence could undermine their message following clashes outside the Parliament that left dozens injured.
Protester Mirak Raheem noted that the lack of violence was important, though their work was far from over.
“This is really something amazing, the fact that it happened on the back of largely peaceful protest,” Raheem said. “But obviously, this is just a beginning, that there is a longer journey in terms of the kind of work that has to be done, not just to rebuild the economy but to create public confidence in this political system.”
Thousands of Sri Lankans take to the streets a day after police opened fire at demonstrators amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
The protests underscored the dramatic fall of the Rajapaksa political clan that has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the last two decades.
Rajapaksa and his wife slipped away in the night aboard a military plane early Wednesday. On Thursday, he went to Singapore, according to the city-state’s Foreign Ministry. It said he had not requested asylum.
Since Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in power, Rajapaksa probably wanted to leave while he still had constitutional immunity and access to the plane.
A military strategist whose brutal campaign helped end the country’s 26-year civil war, Rajapaksa and his brother, who was president at the time, were hailed by the island’s Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Despite accusations of wartime atrocities, including ordering military attacks on ethnic Tamil civilians and abducting journalists, Rajapaksa remained popular among many Sri Lankans. He has continually denied the allegations.
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