Former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. (File) Sri Lanka crisis Live Updates: Sri Lanka’s top court Friday barred the country’s former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa from leaving the country until July 28 without permission, Transparency International Sri Lanka said. Three other former officials, including two former central bank governors, also cannot leave the country without the court’s permission till July 28, the anti-corruption group said in a tweet.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been sworn in as the interim president of Sri Lanka hours after the Speaker accepted the resignation sent in by embattled ex-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The Speaker said that the Parliament will meet on Saturday and the new President will be elected within seven days as per provisions of the Constitution, the Daily Mirror Lanka reported quoting Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. The newly-elected president is likely to appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.
Protesters who had stormed government buildings, including the President’s residence and PM’s office, in the past week, vacated them on Thursday, saying they did not want to damage public property. Following this, Sri Lankan military troops moved in to reinforce security.
After days of uncertainty, Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday night emailed the resignation that demonstrators have sought for months. Gotabaya, who is currently in Singapore, fled Sri Lanka with his wife and stayed in Male, Maldives for a day before he travelled to Singapore.
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sings the national anthem of Sri Lanka during the country's Independence Day celebration in Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 4, 2022. (AP, file)
Sri Lanka's top court on Friday barred former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa from leaving the country without permission until July 28, anti-corruption group Transparency International Sri Lanka said.
Three other former officials, including two former central bank governors, also cannot travel outside the country without the court's permission till July 28, the group said in a tweet. --Reuters
ri Lanka, a popular destination for holidaymakers, should be teeming with tourists at this time of year. Instead, an unprecedented economic crisis and political turmoil have all but wreaked its tourism with about 40 per cent of the pre-bookings being cancelled recently.
Tourism accounts for about 5 per cent of Sri Lanka's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with Britain, India and China being the main markets. Sri Lanka is facing its worst foreign exchange crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the island nation's earnings from tourism and remittances. --PTI
Sri Lanka's interim President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Friday decided to prohibit the use of the word 'His Excellency' to address the President and abolished the presidential flag, as he underlined his commitment to protecting democracy and the Constitution of the crisis-hit country.
“Rather than protecting individuals, protect the country,” Wickremesinghe, who is also the prime minister, said after he was sworn in as Sri Lanka's acting president until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after protests against his government for mishandling the economy that bankrupted the country.
He said as the acting President he decided to prohibit the use of the word ‘His Excellency' when addressing the President. --PTI
India is doing as much as possible to be with neighbour Sri Lanka in its time of crisis, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said after launching stealth frigate in Kolkata. --PTI
Gevindu Kumaratunga, MP of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party told news agency ANI that the Opposition has decided on a schedule to select the next President.
"After receiving the nominations, a new President will be decided upon on Wednesday after voting," he added.
Sri Lanka's newly appointed acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Friday that he would follow constitutional process and establish law and order in the country.
Wickremesinghe, who was appointed acting President after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned from his post on Thursday, asked lawmakers to work towards a consensus to establish an all-party government in the crisis-ridden country. (Reuters)
Sri Lanka is continuing negotiations with China for as much as $4 billion in aid and is confident Beijing will agree "at some point," Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing Sri Lanka's ambassador to China.
Colombo is asking China for a loan of $1 billion to repay an equivalent amount of Chinese debt coming due this year, Palitha Kohona said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Sri Lanka is also seeking a $1.5 billion credit line to pay for Chinese imports and activation of a $1.5 billion swap, Kohona added. (Reuters)
Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka's top leader for the second time in two months. Sri Lankan Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya read out the oath swearing in Wickremesinghe as the interim President.
Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the country's acting president on Friday, a government official said.
Wickremesinghe had already taken on the role after former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday following months of anti-government protests. (Reuters)
Nominations for the post of Sri Lankan President will be received on July 19 and the ballot will be held on July 20, reported Daily Mirror quoting the Speaker.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday that nearly 5.7 million people in Sri Lanka are in need of life-saving assistance, underscoring the magnitude of the problems faced by the crisis-hit country.
The precise reasons are not known yet, but there is little doubt that even as a stopover, Rajapaksa would be at home in Singapore. The Rajapaksa family has strong connections in Singapore, and both brothers Mahinda and Gotabaya have travelled frequently to the small city-state for medical reasons.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa underwent a heart bypass surgery at Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital in May 2019, months before the presidential election of that year, which he won. His doctor there was reported to be a Sri Lankan Tamil.
An aeroplane believed to have carried Sri Lankan leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa from the Maldives to Singapore was the world’s most-tracked flight on Thursday, reported Bloomberg.
Saudia flight 788 from Male was being tracked by almost 5,000 users as of 7.43 a.m. GMT, said the report quoting data from Flightradar24.com.
Sri Lankan Speaker urges public to allow a peaceful environment for all MPs to take part in the process which should finish within 7 days. He added that the Parliament will meet on Saturday. (PTI)
The speaker of parliament in crisis-hit Sri Lanka has accepted a resignation letter from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, having verified its authenticity after it was flown from Singapore late on Thursday, he told reporters.
'From this point, we will move to constitutionally appoint a new president,' the speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, said on Friday.
Rajapaksa arrived in Singapore following a stopover in the Maldives, after he fled Sri Lanka amid a wave of unrest as his island nation grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades. (Reuters)
An aide to the speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament issued a statement that said the speaker had received the president's resignation through the Sri Lankan Embassy in Singapore, but there was no immediate official announcement.
An announcement was planned for Friday after the authenticity and legality of the letter are verified, the statement said.As word of the resignation spread, jubilant crowds gathered near the president’s office to celebrate. (Reuters)
For years, Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa dynasty ruled the island nation with an iron fist, striking fear into political opponents, journalists and other perceived threats to their power. Now protesters are chasing them out of their homes, and out of power.
But it wasn’t only demonstrators that wanted Rajapaksa out of office: Even other members of his family saw him as a lame-duck leader. And one in particular, his 36-year-old nephew Namal Rajapaksa, has already been thinking of how the dynasty can restore its reputation over the long term even as the increasingly violent protests had some observers wondering if the whole family would be forced into exile.
When I first met Mahinda Rajapaksa at a conference of women panchayat members at Avdhash Kaushal’s training institute in Dehradun in the mid-Nineties, he was a modest backbencher in the Sri Lankan parliament with an impassioned interest in local self-government which he believed was the only way to govern his fractious nation. Empowering the people for self-government seemed to be his primary preoccupation. When he became PM, he invited me, as Minister of Panchayati Raj, to Colombo to address a mammoth meeting of elected local government representatives gathered from all over the island-nation in the impressive Bandaranaike Hall (their equivalent of our Vigyan Bhawan) and obliged most of his cabinet ministers to also attend. This was followed by a detailed interaction with a group of experts he had put together to draft an amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution that drew its inspiration from our 73rd and 74th amendments, initiated by Rajiv Gandhi.
While his arch political opponent, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, warned me repeatedly to not trust the old fox, I continued my cordial relationship with Mahinda because I saw no reason to get entangled in the coils of our island neighbour’s internal affairs.
Former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar writes.
Maldives government has granted diplomatic clearance for a Sri Lanka Air Force aircraft carrying Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his spouse, on a transit visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.
"President Rajapaksa left to Singapore on 14 July 2022," the statement added. (Reuters)
Crowds set off firecrackers, shouted slogans and danced ecstatically at the Gota Go Gama protest site, named mockingly after Rajapaksa's first name.
"The whole country will celebrate today," Damitha Abeyrathne, an activist, said. "It's a big victory."
"We never thought we would get this country free from them," she added, referring to the Rajapaksa family who dominated the South Asian country's politics for two decades. (Reuters)