Sri Lanka’s interim president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, imposed a state of emergency on Monday. two days before the Parliament appoints the new leader of the country, after the abandonment of office and the departure of the former head of state Gotabaya Rajapaksa amid massive demonstrations.
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“I am of the opinion that, because of the public emergency in Sri Lanka, it is necessary, in the interest of public security, to protect order and maintain essential supplies and services for the life of the community,” Wickremesinghe said in an order.
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The Sri Lankan Parliament is scheduled to meet this Tuesday for the nomination of the candidates for president of the island nation, while the final vote if there is more than one candidate will be carried out secretly next Wednesday by the 225 legislators that make up the legislature.
The interim president who emerges on Wednesday will have to take charge of the nation, mired in a serious economic and institutional crisis, until 2024, when new elections are held.
One of the names that sounds stronger for that position is the opposition leader, Sanjith Premadasa, who already competed for the presidency in 2019, finishing second.
A faction of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the formation of the deposed Rajapaksa, holds the majority of parliamentary seats and has announced that it will support the candidacy of Wickremesinghe, prime minister until he took office as president last Friday.
Another SLPP faction supports Dullas Alahapperuma, a party dissident.
The new government will have to resume talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a possible financial rescue of Sri Lanka.
The island country has suffered for months from shortages of medicine, food and fuelcaused in part by the great indebtedness, mistaken government policies, and the impact of the Easter attacks and the pandemic on tourism.
This situation gave rise to protests throughout the island since the end of March, when thousands of people began to take to the streets to demand the resignation of Rajapaksa for his handling of the economic crisis.
On July 9, hundreds of protesters broke into the official residences of Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe, forcing them to flee and announce their resignation.
An announcement with which, however, only Rajapaksa went ahead by resigning from his position as head of state last Friday from Singapore, where he had arrived a day earlier from the Maldives, after fleeing from Sri Lanka on Wednesday.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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