Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been sworn in as acting president on Friday.
Wickremesinghe had stepped into the role after former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday following months of anti-government demonstrations.
Sri Lankan Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeyweardana today announced Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation and said that the process of election of a new President will be completed in seven days. Protesters retreated from government facilities in Sri Lanka on Thursday, after Gotabaya sent in his resignation.
The President had fled the country to escape a popular uprising against an economic crisis blamed on his government’s poor management.
Rajapaksa, once considered a “war hero” by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority for crushing the LTTE and ending the nearly 30-year civil war, is now detested by the same people who dramatically stormed his official residence over Sri Lanka’s worst economic woes following which he fled the country in the middle of the night.