Sri Lanka Crisis: PM Wickremesinghe Backs Protesters Demanding President Rajapaksa’s Resignation

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister said the young protesters in the village would be safeguarded and their views would be sought for the shaping of future policy.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (File Photo: AP)

New Delhi: Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has in an unusual move extended support to the protesters, who have been camping at a popular beachfront in Colombo for over a month calling for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation for mishandling the nation’s worst economic crisis, PTI reported. Earlier on Saturday, Wickremesinghe said that he had appointed a committee to look after the interests of the ‘Gota Go Home’ village protesters, who have been camping at Colombo’s Galle Face Green since April 9.

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister said the young protesters in the village would be safeguarded and their views would be sought for the shaping of future policy.

Wickremesinghe, who was appointed as the Prime Minister by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after asking his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa to quit, told BBC Sinhala Service in an interview that the ‘Gota Go Gama’ protest should be continued to bring a change in the political system in the country and let the country’s youth take the responsibility to lead, according to the news agency.

Earlier on Thursday, Wickremesinghe was appointed as Sri Lanka’s 26th Prime Minister as the country was without a government since Monday when Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned after violence erupted following an attack on the anti-government protesters by his supporters.

Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Party (SLPP) has extended its support to 73-year-old Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP).

Almost all parties represented in the 225-member Parliament have said that they would support Wickremesinghe in his effort to pull the country out of the current economic crisis although they would not be a party to his government.

This come as Sri Lanka is going through the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.