Colombo: A day after winning a vote in parliament and pleading with the island nation to unite in an effort to find a solution to its worst economic crisis in decades, veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s next president on Thursday.
The six-time prime minister succeeded Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who quit his position and left Sri Lanka last week in the wake of widespread protests over his management of the country’s economy. The nation’s chief justice officiated the swearing-in event, which took place in parliament.
A catastrophic financial crisis has rendered the 22 million-person nation helpless, and a dearth of foreign cash has resulted in shortages of goods including fuel, food, and medication.The primary state-run distributor, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, will resume sales on Thursday with a new rationing system in place after receiving additional supplies of diesel over the weekend, according to the power and energy ministry.
Despite Wickremesinghe’s unpopularity with some segments of the populace, the protest movement that ousted Rajapaksa, the first president of Sri Lanka to resign while in office, remained fairly subdued.
The presidential secretariat, a colonial-era structure that was overrun by a sea of demonstrators earlier this month together with the president and prime minister’s official houses, was empty on Thursday.
