Sri Lanka’s opposition chief ready to run for president

July 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The leader of the Sri Lankan opposition, Sajit Premadasa, has decided that he will present his candidacy to preside over the country once Gotabaya Rajapaksa makes his resignation official, scheduled for this Wednesday, according to the BBC.

Premadasa’s decision comes after the positive talks that his party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), has had with other formations of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, a country that in recent months is experiencing its worst economic and social crisis since it was threw off the British colonial yoke.

Rajapaksa is scheduled to officially step down on Wednesday, allowing Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe or another leader to be sworn in by parliament to take up the post on an interim basis. The interim president is expected to be elected no later than July 20 and pending elections, which should not be held later than March 2023.

For the moment, Wickremesinghe has obtained the support of 115 members of Parliament to assume the Presidency, at a time when negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are underway.

At the moment it is not known who Wickremesinghe’s candidate for prime minister would be, although it is not ruled out that it may emerge from the consensus of Parliament, whose head, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, could also be sworn in as interim president for a period of 30 days –while the Assembly elects a new one and in case there is no other candidate–.

Rajapaksa thus gives in after several months of protests over rising prices and lack of food, medicine and fuel. The popular revolution that ended up breaking out this Saturday — with images of people breaking into luxurious official residences, including that of the president — has thus forced the definitive fall of the Rajapaksa family, after Gotabaya forced his brother Mahinda to leave office in a futile attempt to quell the protests.

Mahinda’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa’s old rival and the president’s last option to solve the crisis, ended up resigning hours earlier to make way for a concentration government whose main function will be to call new elections.