Six-time prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was elected as crisis-wracked Sri Lanka’s new president in a parliamentary vote yesterday, with the backing of the disgraced former leader’s party.
Official results gave the veteran politician 134 votes, an absolute majority in the 225-member parliament, after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned as president in the wake of protesters overrunning his palace.
“Our divisions are now over,” Wickremesinghe said in a brief acceptance speech in parliament, urging his defeated rivals “to join me and work together to bring the country out of the crisis we are facing.”
Wickremesinghe takes charge of a bankrupt nation that is in bailout talks with the IMF, with its 22 million people enduring severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
He was backed by the Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party — still the largest in parliament — and is despised as a proxy for the former leader by the protesters after months of demonstrations over the economic crisis.
They have also been demanding the departure of Wickremesinghe, who has pledged to crack down if protesters take to the streets.
Hundreds of heavily armed troops and police stood guard outside the parliament, but there were no signs of demonstrators.
Outside the presidential secretariat, where protesters camped for months to demand Rajapaksa step down, actress Damitha Abeyrathne, 45, said: “We lost. The whole country lost.”
The struggle would continue, Abeyrathne told reporters.
“The politicians are fighting for their power. They are not fighting for the people. They have no feeling for people who are suffering,” she said.
One by one, the legislators entered ballot booths set up on the floor of the chamber to choose between the three candidates.
Wickremesinghe was elected for the balance of Rajapaksa’s term, which runs until November 2024, and the speaker’s office said he would be sworn in today.
Analysts said that he is likely to appoint Dinesh Gunawardena as prime minister.
Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa remains in the country and party sources said that he had pressed legislators to support Wickremesinghe.
As acting president, Wickremesinghe extended a state of emergency that gives police and security forces sweeping powers.
A court yesterday ordered the protesters to vacate their camp near the Presidential Secretariat and confine themselves only to an area designated as a protest site.
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