July 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Sri Lankan opposition leader Sajit Premadasa has announced his candidacy for the island’s presidency following the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the appointment of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as interim president.
“I am running to be president (…) Although it is an uphill struggle, I am convinced that the truth will prevail,” Premadasa reported on his profile on the social network Twitter, where he pointed out that the coalition of former president Rajapaksa ” dominate the numbers.
Premadasa’s decision comes after the positive talks that his party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), held at the beginning of the week with other formations of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, a country that in recent months is experiencing its worst economic and social crisis since throwing off the British colonial yoke.
Following Rajapaksa’s resignation and Wickremesinghe’s appointment as caretaker, the Sri Lankan island is scheduled to hold elections no later than March 2023.
The popular revolution that arose in protest against the increase in prices and lack of basic supplies has thus forced the definitive fall of the Rajapaksa family, after Gotabaya forced his brother Mahinda to resign as prime minister at the beginning of May in a superfluous attempt to quell the protests.
Mahinda’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa’s old rival and the president’s last option to solve the crisis, also ended up resigning this week before temporarily occupying the Presidency to make way for a concentration government whose main function will be the call of new elections.
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