Ranil Wickremesinghe has won the presidential election which was held in Sri Lanka on Wednesday. In the final nail-biting minutes of an alliance with the SLPP breakaway group, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Dullas Alahapperuma, heaping the pressure on Wickremesinghe.
"Our divisions now are over," Wickremesinghe proclaimed during his acceptance speech to parliament, which he delivered after legislators elected him Sri Lanka's new head of state.
Late Tuesday, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) - led by former President Maithripala Sirisena - and several other Muslim parties decided to vote for the opposition-backed Alahapperuma.
It is the first time in more than seven decades of independence that Sri Lanka’s Parliament has voted to replace a head of state after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned from the post on 14 July. He flew to Singapore via the Maldives on 13 July, after thousands of anti-government protesters stormed the President's House on 9 July.
In 1993, the Sri Lankan parliament unanimously approved appointing Dingiri Banda Wijetunga as president after president Ramasinghe Premadasa - father of the present opposition leader Sajith Premadasa - was assassinated by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber on May Day.
Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, faces default on foreign debt because of the economic collapse and financial mismanagement. The island nation owes $51Bln, primarily from US-dominated institutions.
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