Veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new president on Thursday, a day after winning a parliamentary vote and urging the country to come together to find a way out of its worst economic crisis in decades.
The country of 22 million people is suffering from a lack of foreign currency, causing shortages of fuel, food and medicine as prices soar.
Inflation reached 59% a year in June, according to the statistics bureau.
Wickremesinghe, six-time prime minister, replaced Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled Sri Lanka and resigned last week after mass protests over his handling of the economy. The inauguration ceremony was held in Parliament and presided over by the country’s Chief Justice.
Sri Lanka received new supplies of diesel over the weekend, and the main state distributor, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, would restart sales under a new rationing system from this Thursday, according to the Energy Ministry.
The protest movement that ousted Rajapaksa – Sri Lanka’s first president to step down – remained largely muted, despite Wickremesinghe’s unpopularity among some sections of the population.
Only a few people were present outside the presidential secretariat on Thursday, a colonial-era building that was overrun by a sea of protesters earlier this month, along with the official residences of the president and prime minister.
But some promised to fight Wickremesinghe.
“We are not going to give up because what the country needs is a total system change,” said Pratibha Fernando, a protester at the secretariat. “We want to get rid of these corrupt politicians, so that’s what we’re doing.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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