The Sri Lankan Parliament extended this Friday the state of emergency announced by the president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, last July when he still held the position of interim after the departure from the country of the hitherto head of state Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who traveled to the Maldives in the face of the growing wave of protests against the Government.
The measure, which has gone ahead unanimously, has not been subject to debate by the deputies, according to information from the newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’. The extension had been proposed by the Minister of Education, Susil Premajayantha.
Wickremesinghe’s arrival in power took place after the former president presented his resignation after several months of protests over price increases, lack of food, medicine and fuel, a situation that has put the small Asian island in front of its worst economic crisis since independence from the British colonial yoke.
The popular revolution in Sri Lanka has thus forced the definitive fall of the Rajapaksa family, after Gotabaya forced his brother Mahinda to also resign as prime minister in early May in a superfluous attempt to quell the protests.
