COLOMBO —
Sri Lanka’s protest movement
reached its 100th day Sunday having forced one president from office and now
turning its sights on his successor as the country’s economic crisis continues.
اضافة اعلان
Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his palace shortly before
demonstrators invaded it last weekend and on Thursday resigned from the
presidency.
His mismanagement is blamed for Sri Lanka’s
financial turmoil, which has forced its 22 million people to endure shortages
of food, fuel and medicines since late last year.
The campaign to oust Rajapaksa, organized mainly
through posts on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, drew people from across Sri
Lanka’s often unbridgeable ethnic divides.
United by economic hardships, minority Tamils and
Muslims joined the majority Sinhalese to demand the ouster of the once-powerful
Rajapaksa clan.
It began as a two-day protest on April 9, when tens
of thousands of people set up camp in front of Rajapaksa’s office — a crowd so
much larger than the organizers’ expectations that they decided to stay on.
Under Sri Lanka’s constitution, Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe was automatically installed as acting president following
Rajapaksa’s resignation and is now the leading candidate to succeed him
permanently in a parliamentary vote next week.
But the veteran politician is despised by the
protesters as an ally of the Rajapaksa clan, four brothers who have dominated
the island’s politics for years.
Social media activist and protest campaign supporter
Prasad Welikumbura said Wickremesinghe too should go.
“Its been 100 days since it started,” Welikumbura
said on Twitter.
“But, its still far from any concrete change in the
system. #GoHomeRanil, #NotMyPresident.”
Rajapaksa’s elder brother Mahinda resigned as
premier in May and he appointed Wickremesinghe to replace him — his sixth term
in the post — despite his being an opposition MP representing a party with only
one seat in parliament.
The move did little to assuage the protesters’
anger, and when they stormed Rajapaksa’s tightly-guarded 200-year-old
Presidential Palace they also set Wickremesinghe’s private home ablaze.
Now the Rajapaksas’ SLPP party — which has more than
100 MPs in the 225-member parliament — is backing Wickremesinghe in the vote
due Wednesday.
A spokesman for the protesters told AFP: “We are now
discussing with groups involved in the ‘Aragalaya’ (struggle) on turning the
campaign against Ranil Wickremesinghe.”
Numbers at the protest site have diminished since
Rajapaksa’s exit, and the demonstrators have vacated three key state buildings
they occupied — the 200-year-old presidential palace, the Prime Minister’s
official Temple Trees residence and his office.
Wickremesinghe has ordered the military and the police to do
whatever it takes to ensure order and defense officials said additional troops
and police will be poured to the capital on Monday to bolster security around
parliament ahead of the vote.
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