Ranil Wickremesinghe, the current Prime Minister and acting president of Sri Lanka, will lead the island nation through 2024. On Wednesday, 20th July 2022, the Sri Lankan parliament held an election for the president in which Ranil Wickremesinghe emerged as the winning candidate. Wickremesinghe was serving as an acting president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned from the post following recent economic crisis and public outrage causing the government to overturn. Now that Gotabaya Rajapaksa left the country and resigned by email last week, Ranil Wickremesinghe will complete the rest of his tenure.
134 of the 219 votes that were determined to be legitimate went to Ranil Wickremesinghe. Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, the leader of the left-leaning Janatha Vimukti Peramuna party, and Dullas Alahapperuma, a politician from the ruling party, were the other contenders.
A faction of the ruling party, which has 145 seats overall as of the most recent parliamentary election in 2020, supported Wickremesinghe. The other sector as well as the main opposition party, which gained 54 seats the previous time around, supported Alahapperuma.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is a member of parliament from the United National Party (UNP), and has been leading the party since 1994. Before become PM of Sri Lanka in May this year, he had served six terms as the prime minister, 1993 to 1994, 2001 to 2004, 2015 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019.
Meanwhile, Gopal Baglay, the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, stated that India will support an early and effective economic recovery for Sri Lanka. As a result, India will be investing more to aid the nation in developing the capacities necessary to address the country’s economic issues, said Baglay. It is notable that India has already provided Sri Lanka with an aid of approximately $4 billion.
In the recent protests, Sri Lankan people had asked Ranil Wickremesinghe to step down from the post of Prime Minister. After his election as the new president, widespread demonstrations are anticipated around the nation. 22 million people in Sri Lanka are currently experiencing shortages of basic necessities including food, fuel, and medication due to the economic crisis.
