After months of protests added to the economic chaos and an unprecedented political crisis, Sri Lanka held this Wednesday (20) an indirect election to appoint a buffer president. Ranil Wickremesinghe, a former prime minister who previously held the post as interim president, will initially complete Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s original term, until November 2024.
In a secret ballot, Wickremesinghe defeated former education minister Dullas Alahapperuma, backed by the main opposition party, and leftist leader Anura Dissanayake.
​Rajapaksa resigned from his post after fleeing the country, bound for the Maldives and then Singapore – with the right to have been stopped by agents at Colombo airport before he managed to consummate his escape. His permanence, in the post and in the country, had become bordering on unsustainable after protesters invaded the presidential palace on the 9th and occupied it for days.
The furious protests, on a Saturday of chaos, were the culmination of months of dissatisfaction with the management of Rajapaksa, otherwise representative of a political dynasty that has been around for decades in power in Sri Lanka.
The anger of the Sinhalese was also directed at the then Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, who had his house also invaded, but also set on fire. Neither she nor the fact that he had spoken, on the 9th, of handing over the post to a government of national unity, however, made him resign.
On the contrary, the politician was appointed interim president on the day that Rajapaksa had promised to resign but did not – the resignation itself would only come the next day, by email. Wickremesinghe​ returned to the prime minister’s post, which he had held five times, in May, replacing Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya’s older brother forced to resign in another wave of similarly motivated protests.
The last few days, in the midst of a state of emergency decreed and renewed by the interim, were more calm on the Sri Lankan streets. It remains to be seen whether the election of the new president will maintain this climate in the country, so that he can fulfill one of his two main missions, that of pacifying the country.
The other is to unlock the economy, ravaged by the biggest crisis since the island in the Pacific, of 22 million inhabitants, became independent from the United Kingdom in 1948. to the residential palace and the premier’s house, protesters allowed themselves to be photographed using the swimming pool, having picnics in the garden, stretching out on beds and organizing tours of the properties.
The spiral of chaos has been accelerated by what is seen as a string of mismanagement by the Rajapaksa family, compounded by the pandemic. Sri Lanka recently became the first Asian nation since 1999 to default on its $51 billion external debt.
Tax cuts enacted in 2019, combined with a dryness in tourism receipts due to restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus, reduced state revenue and paralyzed the economy. This also hampered the ability to launch public policies to curb the social upheaval, triggered when the Sri Lankan government, without credit, was forced to ration fuel.
In another questionable measure, Rajapaksa even banned the use of fertilizers of foreign origin, under the justification of promoting organic agriculture. With no technology available, producers had one of the worst harvests last year, aggravating a scenario of food shortages and inflation.
Wickremesinghe told CNN this week that the previous administration, with which he was an ally, was “hiding facts” about the economic crisis, which has left the country, in his words, bankrupt. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) even conditional the full resumption of negotiations to the end of the political crisis.
