Ranil Wickramasinghe elected new Sri Lanka president

Agencies | Colombo

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Sri Lanka's parliament has chosen Ranil Wickramasinghe to be the crisis-marred nation's new president on Wednesday.

225 members of the House were eligible to vote and participated in the secret ballot to elect the president.

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had turned in his resignation after fleeing the country to Singapore. The then-president first flew to the Maldives after tens of thousands of protesters stormed his official residence in Colombo.

The economy in Sri Lanka is bracing for a sharp contraction due to the unavailability of primary inputs for production, an 80 per cent depreciation of the currency since March 2022, a lack of foreign reserves and the country's failure to meet its international debt obligations.

The economic crisis has prompted an acute shortage of essential items like fuel and medicines.