Colombo, Sri Lanka’s former president Ranil Wickremesinghe has called for opposition unity to tackle what he had termed another possible economic collapse in the island nation.
Addressing his United National Party’s working committee over the weekend, the 77-year-old leader said, “The opposition is not entirely together despite our ongoing work as the joint opposition.”
In the last few months, the UNP put together a loose coalition of opposition splinter groups to form the joint opposition, but the main opposition in parliament, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, has maintained a distance.
The Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, too, carries out its own campaign separately.
Wickremesinghe said all opposition groups must work cohesively to oppose the National People’s Power-led government, which he accused of being unable to govern effectively.
“What we are seeing today is the development of a bad situation. The government has got stuck at all fronts. The economy is falling. We will soon witness its total collapse,” said Wickremesinghe, who was credited for turning around the economy from its bankruptcy in 2022.
Sri Lanka was hit by an unprecedented financial crisis in 2022, the worst since its independence in 1948.
Next to the economy, the question of fundamental rights has cropped up, the former president said.
He talked about the detention and ill treatment of the former state intelligence chief Suresh Sallay, who is currently hospitalised after he staged a hunger strike claiming torture and ill treatment under detention.
Sallay was arrested in February under the island nation’s anti-terror act.
“The cost of living has risen. How should we in opposition respond?” Wickremesinghe asked.
Wickremesinghe’s address marked his first political engagement since he underwent heart surgery earlier in the year.
He is accused in a case of misappropriation of public funds for which he spent a week in remand prison before being bailed out in August last year.
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