Ranil Wickremesinghe to be sworn-in as Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister; Mahinda Rajapaksa, 16 others barred from travelling overseas

Vacated after the controversial resignation of former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Ranil Wickremesinghe is to take up the premiership for the record sixth time in the island nation.

Colombo: Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will take oath as the new Prime Minister of Sri Lanka on Thursday. The oath will be taken before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at 6 pm local time, according to an IANS report.

The news of the appointment of Wickremesinghe comes a day after his discussion with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. It is, however, not yet clear as to how Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), now limited to just one seat out of 225 MPs, could command the majority.

Vacated after the controversial resignation of former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe is to take up the premiership for the record sixth time in the island nation.

On Wednesday night, while addressing the nation President Gotabaya announced that a new PM and a government would be replaced for the positions vacated by his brother Mahinda and his government.

Gotabaya also said that he would work on reintroducing the 19th Amendment stripping powers of the Executive President which he himself enjoys and giving many powers to Parliament. He also agreed to abolish the Presidential system. Rajapaksa said the new government would be run by a Prime Minister who can command the majority in Parliament.

Mahinda resigned from his post following violent clashes that erupted when his supporters attacked a month-long protest carried out by non-political people. The protesters have been demanding the resignation of the Rajapaksa government and the President amidst a severe financial crisis involving shortages of essentials, including food, fuel, medicine, cooking gas and hours of power outages.

A Sri Lanka court today imposed a foreign travel ban on former PM Mahinda Rajapaksa and 12 other Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna politicians and loyalists.

The Fort Magistrate’s Court on Thursday imposed a travel ban on former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, his son Namal Rajapaksa and 15 others in view of investigations against them for the deadly attack on anti-government protesters in Colombo this week.

The court also barred them from travelling overseas due to the investigations taking place on the attacks on the GotaGoGama and MynaGoGama peaceful protest sites on Monday, News 1st website reported.

The order was also imposed on parliamentarians Johnston Fernando, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Sanjeewa Edirimanne, Kanchana Jayaratne, Rohitha Abeygunawardena, C. B. Ratnayake, Sampath Athukorala, Renuka Perera, Sanath Nishantha, Senior DIG Deshabandu Thennakoon among others.

The Attorney General had requested a travel ban on the 17 individuals, citing that they need to be present in Sri Lanka for the investigations on the attacks on GotaGoGama and MynaGogama as it appears that they conspired and planned those attacks.