Tag Archives: Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua | Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe was elected as the new president of Sri Lanka in an election held in parliament on Wednesday. Soon after winning the election, Wickremesinghe addressed the parliament, calling on all legislators including the opposition parliamentarians to unite and work together with him to …

How family rule fails | THE INDEPENDENT | The Rajapaksas; one of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political families, were once revered as liberators. They initiated many urban development projects that pushed their country into the upper middle income status with per capita income of US$3,852 in 2019. Despite that, after …

How this South Asian country is transiting from a stable liberal democracy into a chaotic illiberal mobocracy THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | The news from Sri Lanka is intriguing and confounding both as politics and as economics. Let us begin with its politics. Sri Lanka has, since …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua | Sri Lanka’s Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena on Friday announced the official resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will be sworn in as an interim president. In a media briefing, Speaker Abeywardena said he has received the resignation letter of the president, …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua | Sri Lanka’s speaker of parliament on Monday said political party leaders have decided to elect a new president on July 20 through a vote in parliament. In a statement, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said that following a meeting with all political party leaders, it was …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua | Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has agreed to resign after party leaders in the parliament demanded both he and the president to resign, as protesters stormed the president’s residence and office on Saturday. A statement from the prime minister’s office said Wickremesinghe told …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua | Sri Lanka’s cabinet of ministers has approved a proposal to declare Fridays a holiday for government employees to encourage them to carry out agricultural work to increase production in the country, local media reported on Tuesday. According to a cabinet proposal, the ministers endorsed two key …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | Xinhua |  Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry on Tuesday ordered the country’s armed forces to open fire on anyone looting public property or causing harm to others following a day of violent clashes. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa also urged people on Tuesday to remain calm, and refrain from …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | AFP | As Shantha Prasad carried children wounded in Sri Lanka’s deadly attacks into a Colombo hospital, memories of the country’s deadly civil war flooded back. “I carried about eight wounded children yesterday,” he told AFP on Monday, a day after a string of blasts hit hotels …

Colombo, Sri Lanka | AFP | Sri Lanka’s president on Sunday reappointed as prime minister the same man he sacked from the job nearly two months ago, ending a power struggle and immediately setting off an uneasy cohabitation government. Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose shock dismissal in late October threw Sri Lanka …