COLOMBO —
Sri Lanka’s parliament elected six-time prime
minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the crisis-wracked country’s new president
Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
He replaces
Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled to Singapore
and resigned last week after months of protests.
AFP looks at how the bankrupt South Asian nation’s
economy collapsed, and what could come next as the seasoned Wickremesinghe
inherits the complicated, corrupt, and often violent political system.
In his acceptance speech, Wickremesinghe on
Wednesday urged all parties to sink their differences and join him in pulling
the country out of its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in
1948.
How bad are things
in Sri Lanka?
The UN has warned that
Sri Lanka is heading for a humanitarian catastrophe with months of food, fuel, and
medicines shortages beginning to bite.
More than five out of every six families are eating
less food, according to the World Food Program, while schools and non-essential
government institutions are closed for weeks to reduce commuting and save fuel.
Motorists queue for hours on the rare occasion
petrol or diesel are available, and the country is enduring lengthy power cuts
as the government has no money to import oil for generators.
Even according to official figures, inflation has
crossed 50 percent.
The COVID-19 pandemic devastated both tourism and
overseas remittances, two of the country’s economic mainstays, with problems
exacerbated by policy blunders.
More than half of the country’s crops failed after
Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned agrochemical imports last year. The ban was lifted
after six months, but fertilizer is yet to return.
Sri Lanka declared itself bankrupt in mid-April when
the government defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt.
What will
Wickremesinghe do?
The pro-West Wickremesinghe
has already begun talks with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is
banking on bilateral aid from Japan, China, and India to tide over till a
bailout is secured.
While an agreement with the IMF may be months away,
Wickremesinghe has said he wants to unveil a new budget for 2022 in August as
allocations made last year were totally out of whack.
“The data in the budget for 2022 by the previous
government is not credible,” Wickremesinghe told parliament earlier this month.
The debt statistics may also have been understated,
he added, calling for urgent financial reforms.
He wants to sell off loss-making state enterprises
such as the national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines — which lost nearly $700
million in the first four months of this year alone and has accumulated debts
of more than $2 billion.
What is the status
of IMF talks?
Despite their differences,
Sri Lanka’s political parties are united in their support for ongoing talks
with the IMF.
Wickremesinghe will appoint a new prime minister who
is expected to follow his free-market economic policies and carry out painful reforms.
Some politicians have bitterly opposed harsh IMF
prescriptions to cut subsidies and raise taxes, but main political leaders
agree that Sri Lanka should bite the bullet and deal with the international
lender.
The political crisis interrupted the negotiations,
and the IMF said last week that it hoped the unrest would be resolved soon so
they could resume.
But no political
party in the current parliament has a clear majority.
What will happen to
the protest movement?
The mass protest movement
that began in April and climaxed with Rajapaksa’s expulsion from his palace
earlier this month could spell trouble for Wickremesinghe.
The protesters also oppose Wickremesinghe, seeing
him as a proxy of the disgraced Rajapaksa clan.
He has declared a state of emergency and drawn a
distinction between “protesters” and “rioters”, vowing to take a tough line
against troublemakers.
For their part, the protesters have vowed to
maintain their efforts to force Wickremesinghe from office, but most admit that
they have run out of steam and public support was waning.
When university students at the forefront of the
struggle called for a march in Colombo Tuesday, fewer than 1,000 people turned
up, with police estimating the numbers at only a few hundred.
A campaign to surround the national parliament and
block Wednesday’s vote also fizzled out as no one turned up.
“We supported the struggle, but after getting rid of
the Rajapaksa family there is no point in continuing it and causing
disruptions,” a doctor at the national hospital told AFP, asking not to be
named.
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