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COLOMBO: A wave of anger swept Sri Lanka on Wednesday after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has promised to step down, won a vote in parliament to be the country’s next president until 2024.
MPs voted to choose a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the ousted president who fled the country on July 13 to escape a popular uprising over the role his family — Sri Lanka’s most influential political dynasty — played in the country’s worst-ever economic meltdown.
Protests flared in Colombo in March and have spread across the country since people have been struggling with daily power cuts and shortages of basic commodities, such as fuel, food and medicines, as the country’s foreign currency reserves have run out, leaving it unable to pay for imports.
When Rajapaksa left, he made his ally Wickremesinghe acting president, a decision that triggered more protests.
Wednesday’s vote was held to choose a new president to complete Rajapaksa’s term, which expires in 2024.
The 225-member parliament gave 134 votes to Wickremesinghe and 82 to the other main candidate, ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party lawmaker Dullas Alahapperuma, who was supported by the opposition. A third candidate, Anura Dissanayaka, leader of the Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, received only three votes.
“I have been in the legislature for 43 years, and I know the problems faced by the country as well as by the people,” Wickremesinghe said in parliament after the election.
“Let us be united to take the country forward for the betterment of the nation. Let us chalk out a new road map to develop the country and the participation of all parties and rescue the people.”
Wickremesinghe was appointed prime minister in May, after Rajapaksa’s elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was forced to resign when anti-government demonstrations turned deadly. He also took on the role of finance minister, becoming the public face of the country’s economic woes.
A seasoned lawmaker, Wickremesinghe has been prime minister six times but has never completed his term. He announced on July 9 that he was willing to step down and allow an all-party government to take over after thousands of protesters descended on the capital Colombo in one of the largest anti-government marches in the crisis-hit country this year.
As Wickremesinghe will be sworn in as president on Thursday, protesters said they would continue to demonstrate, as they gathered in front of the Presidential Secretariat despite a state of emergency being in place since last week.
Namal Jayaweera, leader of the protest movement, told Arab News at the demonstration site that people are “angry and disappointed over this election, and they feel that their representatives in the parliament have let them down.”
“His election as president is as good as one of the Rajapaksa coming to power which means all our efforts are in vain,” Jayaweera said. “We will intensify our protests undaunted in the coming days to remove him from office.”
Senaka Perera, a prominent lawyer representing the protesters, told Arab News they were not going to accept the result of the parliament vote as Wickremesinghe’s appointment was “against the wishes of the public.”
“Wickremesinghe will continue to follow the orders of the Rajapaksa family,” Perera said.
“Ranil Wickremesinghe has been brought in by the Rajapaksa regime. Therefore, our peaceful protests will go on against Ranil Wickremesinghe and the corrupt system.”