Sri Lanka's new leader calls for national unity

Wickremesinghe follows ballot win with appeal amid economic crisis

Sri Lanka's parliament on Wednesday elected acting president and sixth-time prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the country's new president. Wickremesinghe immediately acknowledged widespread calls for change in appealing for unity in the face of a protracted economic crisis.

Addressing the parliament after winning the presidential ballot, Wickremesinghe called on all legislators to unite and work together with him to lead Sri Lanka out of its troubles.

"We are at a critical juncture. There is an economic crisis and the youth want a system change. People want all parliamentarians to come together," he said.

Wickremesinghe beat his main rival, the five-time lawmaker Dullas Alahapperuma, in the vote by parliamentarians on Wednesday. The Speaker of the Parliament, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, announced in the legislative chamber that Wickremesinghe had won with 134 votes out of the 223 cast by lawmakers. Alahapperuma gained 82 votes.

Also in the ballot was National People's Power leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

"Regardless of who won, we must ensure that the necessary economic and political changes that people want are met. Overcoming the crisis should be the first and foremost task of parliamentarians," said Alahapperuma.

On Tuesday, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrew from the race, saying his Samagi Jana Balawegaya party would support Alahapperuma in the vote.

In a turbulent period of the country, twin firsts were seen with the Sri Lankan parliament's election of a head of state and the resignation of a president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose departure triggered the vote, according to a report of Al Jazeera.

Sri Lanka has witnessed its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, with fuel and food shortages that brought people out onto the streets in long-running protests.

Analysts agree that the new president will face a difficult time ahead. The new administration will have to overcome major challenges to restore stability to the country, with the possibility of more protests down the track.

They note that major economic reforms are required to stabilize the country's balance of payments and address a shortage in foreign currency reserves.

Challenges ahead

Bernard Goonetilleke, chairman of Sri Lankan think tank the Pathfinder Foundation, said the first challenge of the new president and the new administration will be to win the confidence of the people, which has largely been lost.

"Second will be to bring the economy back to its feet, which is very much damaged," he said. "And it is also going to be a long-term exercise. It cannot be done overnight or within a short period of time. It will take a year, two years, maybe three years for the Sri Lankan economy to recover."

The administration must win the support of the people and work on reviving the economy, Goonetilleke added.

However, Chulanee Attanayake, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, said Wickremesinghe "is seen as an associate" of the Rajapaksa family.

"His name was obviously nominated by the ruling party," Attanayake said.

Attanayake said she hopes Sri Lanka will be able to see some kind of stability by the end of next year.

"It will all depend on the government, their policies, and how people will react to those policies," she added.

Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political economist and senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, said that if Sri Lanka reaches an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for an immediate bailout, it's going to mean more austerity, more cuts, and more suffering.

Such an outcome will be "unacceptable to the working people", the academic said.

Attanayake said the terms of a bailout could include reforms to the tax system, cuts to the bloated bureaucracy and rises in utility charges. Such policies will meet "resistance from the general public and would make the government extremely unpopular", she said.

"But doing these reforms is important. If we do not do these reforms right now, we will continue to have similar problems in the years to come," Attanayake said. "So we should take the chance and do the reforms now, so that the future generations will not go through the same problem."

Xinhua contributed to this story.