Roving Periscope: Presidential poll on Wednesday; Sri Lanka on edge, India worried
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day before Sri Lanka’s mid-term presidential election scheduled for Wednesday amid political stalemate, main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrew from the race on Tuesday in favor of a ruling party dissident, Dullas Alahapperuma, as India braced for uncertainty in its neighborhood.
A worried New Delhi has called for an all-party meeting to discuss the Sri Lankan situation. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will brief the meeting on Tuesday, official reports said.
In Sri Lanka, minutes before nominations formally opened, Premadasa tweeted that “for the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish,” his party will support Alahapperuma, a former media minister, to replace Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned last week.
Besides Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Dullas Alahapperuma, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka is now the third candidate in the fray.
Ahead of the nomination for the President’s post, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency, for the sixth time in four months, across the island nation. Listing the efforts to improve the problems faced by the people, he said July would be a difficult time for fuel supply. Still, diesel stocks had been secured and are being distributed. On the ground, however, the long queues and unrest continued amid an extremely tense situation.
Such was the situation in crisis-ridden Sri Lanka that even doctors have warned the people not to fall sick as many families struggled to make two meals a day in a country that was, not too long ago, an inspiration across South Asia for its expanding middle class and higher per capita income.
The media reports quoted former Foreign Minister GL Peiris that most of the ruling party, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), wanted Alahapperuma as President and Sajith Premadasa as the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, Wickremesinghe appointed the PM by the ousted President Gotabaya, distanced himself from the Rajapaksa government. He said he was not part of that administration and had merely been appointed to “handle the economy” of the bankrupt country.
In tomorrow’s crucial poll, Wickremesinghe, 73, is pitted against Alahapperuma, a 63-year-old staunch Sinhala Buddhist nationalist and a key member of the breakaway group of the ruling party, and the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) nominee Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, 53.
The 225-member Parliament is expected to elect the new President to serve the remaining term of the ousted President Rajapaksa until November 2024.
Ahead of the Wednesday mid-term poll, the security has been beefed up in and around Sri Lanka’s Parliament complex after Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena complained to the police, calling for a detailed investigation into certain inflammatory posts published on social media threatening Members of Parliament.
On Monday, Sri Lankan MPs from the ruling party SLPP complained of receiving threat messages on social media, warning them against voting for Sri Lanka’s Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe. The police and the country’s armed forces have been stationed in and around the Parliament complex on Tuesday.
Police have warned that strict action would be taken against those who had created, published, and circulated such threatening posts against lawmakers on social media.
Sri Lankan students and other groups also planned to protest on Tuesday against Wickremesinghe’s expected bid for President, as lawmakers gathered in Parliament to finalize candidates for the role. Six-time Prime Minister Wickremesinghe took over as Acting President after a popular uprising amid a devastating economic crisis that forced previous incumbent Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee first to the Maldives and then to Singapore and resign.
Demonstrators, angered by rocketing prices and shortages of food and fuel, want Wickremesinghe gone too.
