Sri Lanka election: Six-time PM Ranil Wickremesinghe wins presidency
Premium- Sri Lanka's new President: Ranil Wickremesinghe was on Wednesday overwhelmingly elected as president
Sri Lanka's acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe will be the country's next president until 2024. Wickremesinghe to replace Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled the crisis-wracked country and resigned last week. "Ranil Wickremesinghe has been elected as the eighth executive president under the constitution," the secretary general of parliament said after counting finished.
Official results showed Wickremesinghe polled 134 votes in a three-cornered parliamentary vote, with his main opponent Dullas Alahapperuma getting 82 and leftist Anura Dissanayake just three -- giving him an absolute majority on first preferences.
The new president, who holds executive powers, needs to ensure supplies of food, fuel and medicine in the bankrupt nation where inflation is seen touching 70%.
Wickremesinghe will take charge of a bankrupt nation that is in talks with the IMF for a bailout. Sri Lanka ran out of foreign exchange to finance even the most vital imports in a crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic but exacerbated by mismanagement.
Though Wickremesinghe was not a popular choice among Sri Lankan citizens, and as per Reuters news agency, his victory could lead to more demonstrations by people furious with the ruling elite after months of severe shortages of fuel, food, and medicines.
The other main candidate, ruling party lawmaker Dullas Alahapperuma, was more acceptable to the protesters and the opposition but did not have any top-level governance experience in a country with barely any dollars for imports and desperately in need of an IMF bailout.
In the crucial election, the 73-year-old six-time prime minister (Wickremesinghe) secured 134 votes in the 225-member House while his nearest rival and dissident ruling party leader Dullas Alahapperuma got 82. Leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake secured just three votes.
This is for the first time in 44 years that Sri Lanka's Parliament will directly elect a president. Presidential elections in 1982, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2019 had elected them by popular vote.
The only previous occasion when the presidency became vacant mid-term was in 1993 when president Ranasinghe Premadasa was assassinated. DB Wijetunga was unanimously endorsed by Parliament to run the balance of Premadasa’s term.
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