On Thursday morning, 45 years to the day since he was first elected to parliament, Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the eighth president of Sri Lanka, replacing the ousted and exiled Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His path to executive power – the office Wickremesinghe has clamoured after for so many years – was extraordinary. As a searing editorial in Sri Lanka’s Daily FT newspaper put it on Thursday morning: “Wickremesinghe has no popular mandate and he has won the presidency by proxy.”
Many believe Wickremesinghe’s election, far from stabilising Sri Lanka after the toppling of Rajapaksa, will instead create ongoing turmoil and unrest. For a country grappling with the worst economic crisis since the great depression, the consequences could be severe.
