In the midst of a political and economic crisis, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who refuses to leave power appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has already been Prime Minister five times since 1993.
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Sri Lanka has a new Prime Minister and is already disputed. Ranil Wickremesinghe, 73, who held this function five times since 1993, was appointed on Thursday May 12 by President Gotabaya Rajapaka to replace his own brother, Mahinda Rajapaka, try to bring calm and attack the economic and financial crisis that ravages the country. He was responsible for forming a government of national unity.
His first words summarize the catastrophic state in which the island of 22 million inhabitants is located. “We want to bring the nation to return to a situation in which our people will have three meals a day again, said Ranil Wickremesinghe. Our youth must have a future.”
It has been long in the Sri-Lanka of the middle class and the poor, workers in the informal sector, like the drivers of Rickshaw, no longer eat three times a day, due to food inflation, 30 % In April, unemployment and the scarcity of essential goods. The government, over -indebted, no longer has enough exchange reserves to import the products necessary for the functioning of the island nation.
The main opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, had been initially asked to lead a new government, but his leader, Sajith Premadasa, had posed four conditions for which the departure of the Head of State, the Adoption of new laws to strengthen the Parliament and the abolition of the executive presidency.
a relative of the Rajapaka clan
Gotabaya Rajapaka clings to power while the population judges the country’s bankruptcy and has been asking for their resignation for months. He sacrificed, on Monday, May 9, his brother, forced to leave his Prime Minister’s chair, while demonstrators were trying to invest his official residence. Mahinda Rajapaksa was placed in the trincomalee, in a naval base in the north east of the island. Justice has prohibited him from leaving the territory; A measure also applied to his son.
The new Prime Minister, a lawyer, from an affluent family of political leaders and businessmen, is deemed to be a good negotiator, a reformist, a Western pro, but he is also close to the Rajapaka clan. Just before his appointment, the Catholic authorities meant that they considered his appointment as “illegal”. They criticize him in particular his inability to prevent the deadly Easter attacks in 2019, committed against churches and luxury hotels, which had left more than 250 dead and hundreds of injured. He was then Prime Minister of President Maithripala Sirisena. The executive had been accused of having ignored the warnings of Indian intelligence services on the imminent risk of terrorist attacks.
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