Ranil Wickremesinghe elected as the new President of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s six-time former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been elected as the country’s new president.

According to the foreign news agency “Reuters”, Ranil Wickremesinghe has taken over the presidency in place of Gotabaya Rajapakse, who resigned last week and left the crisis-stricken country. According to official results, Ranil Wickremesinghe won 225 seats. received 134 votes in the House and thus secured a simple majority, his main rival Dulce Alhaproma got 82 votes while the leftist candidate Anura Dasanaike got only 3 votes.

On Wednesday, MLAs entered the polling booth one by one to vote for the candidate of their choice. Parliamentary Secretary General Dhammika Dasanayaka said members were reminded that it was an offense to take a photo of the ballot paper or show it to others. It should be noted that Sri Lanka’s previous elections were marred by allegations of corruption and vote-buying. Ranil Wickremesinghe will assume the presidency of the country of 20 million people at a time when the country is in dire need of dollars for purchases and food items. Besides, there is a severe shortage of fuel and medicine. There were hundreds of armed police and army troops outside the parliament, but there were no counter-protesters. had and the chances of his victory were also shown, however, he has not been appointed to any major position till date.

In the 225-member Parliament, Ranil Wickremesinghe had the support of Rajapakse’s SLPP, which has the largest number of seats in the Parliament, and this support is the reason for his victory today.

It should be remembered that Sri Lanka is facing the worst economic crisis in history, against which protests have been going on for several months. Last week, the protests intensified and people surrounded the president’s palace demanding his resignation. After which Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned from the post and went to Singapore. With the departure of Rajapaksa from power, the decline of the powerful ruling party in power in Sri Lanka for two decades seems to be beginning, where before his brother and The finance minister also resigned from his post. Ranil Wickremesinghe, after assuming the post of Acting President, declared emergency and handed over all powers to law enforcement agencies and last week these troops stormed government buildings. I had ordered to vacate the buildings from the protestors who entered.

While talking about the success of Ranil Wickramasinghe in Parliament, an opposition member of assembly said that the members of the assembly considered the tough stand against the protesters as a good omen and decided to support Wickramasinghe.

Political commentator Kaushal Perera admitted that despite winning only one seat in the 2020 elections, 73-year-old Ranil Wickremesinghe had some edge in these parliamentary elections. By restoring it, he had won the trust of the middle class to some extent and by proving his ability, he had also cleared the government buildings of the protesters.