COLOMBO - A veteran politician backed by the party of ousted Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has emerged as the favourite to replace him, analysts said after nominations closed Tuesday.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is a six-time former prime minister who became acting president after Rajapaksa resigned, but is despised by the protesters who forced his predecessor from office.
Wickremesinghe, 73, has the formal backing of the Rajapaksas’ SLPP, the largest bloc in the 225-member parliament that will elect the president on Wednesday.
His main opponent will be SLPP dissident and former education minister Dullas Alahapperuma, who is being supported by the opposition.
The winner of the three-way contest will take charge of a bankrupt nation that is in talks with the IMF for a bailout, with its 22 million people enduring severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Sri Lanka ran out of foreign exchange to finance even the most vital imports in a crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic but exacerbated by mismanagement, critics say.
Months of protests culminated in Rajapaksa fleeing his palace before flying to the Maldives and then Singapore, from where he submitted his resignation. As acting president, Wickremesinghe has extended a state of emergency that gives police and security forces sweeping powers, and last week he ordered troops to evict protesters from state buildings they had occupied.
An opposition MP said Wickremesinghe’s hardline stance against demonstrators was going down well with MPs who had been at the receiving end of mob violence, and most SLPP legislators would side with him.
“Ranil is emerging as the law-and-order candidate,” Tamil MP Dharmalingam Sithadthan told AFP.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is a six-time former prime minister who became acting president after Rajapaksa resigned, but is despised by the protesters who forced his predecessor from office.
Wickremesinghe, 73, has the formal backing of the Rajapaksas’ SLPP, the largest bloc in the 225-member parliament that will elect the president on Wednesday.
His main opponent will be SLPP dissident and former education minister Dullas Alahapperuma, who is being supported by the opposition.
The winner of the three-way contest will take charge of a bankrupt nation that is in talks with the IMF for a bailout, with its 22 million people enduring severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Sri Lanka ran out of foreign exchange to finance even the most vital imports in a crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic but exacerbated by mismanagement, critics say.
Months of protests culminated in Rajapaksa fleeing his palace before flying to the Maldives and then Singapore, from where he submitted his resignation. As acting president, Wickremesinghe has extended a state of emergency that gives police and security forces sweeping powers, and last week he ordered troops to evict protesters from state buildings they had occupied.
An opposition MP said Wickremesinghe’s hardline stance against demonstrators was going down well with MPs who had been at the receiving end of mob violence, and most SLPP legislators would side with him.
“Ranil is emerging as the law-and-order candidate,” Tamil MP Dharmalingam Sithadthan told AFP.
