Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party leader and MP Namal Rajapaksa will be named as the party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential elections on Wednesday. It is reported that Rajapaksa will be nominated for the top position as the Casino King Dhammika Perera pulled out.
Rajapaksa, 38, is the youngest candidate in this election. If won, he would emerge as the youngest president of Sri Lanka.
Who is Namal Rajapaksa?
Eldest son of country’s former president and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, he has graduated with a Law degree City University London. He later joined Sri Lanka Law College to qualify as an attorney at law.
Namal married Limini Weerasinghe in 2019 and have two children.
Namal contested the 2010 parliamentary election as one of the United People’s Freedom Alliance’s candidates in Hambantota District and was elected to Parliament. Mahinda was an MP from Hambantota for 16 years before becoming President in 2005.
He was re-elected as an MP in 2015 and 2020. In 2020, he served as the Minister of Youth and Sports in the government. However, he resigned during the mass resignation of the Second Gotabaya Rajapaksa Cabinet. He was appointed as the National Organiser of the SLPP in March 20204.
Earlier in January this year, Namal paid a visit to Ayodhya’s Ram Janmabhoomi Temple. He had said that he felt honoured and blessed to visit the shrine. “With the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ of Lord Ram, the old glory has been restored to the original birthplace of the deity,” he had said as quoted by news agency ANI.
Sri Lanka will hold the presidential poll on September 21, a contest which is likely to determine the future of economic reforms in the cash-strapped country. This will be the first election to be held in Sri Lanka after it plunged into economic bankruptcy in 2022.
Sri Lanka Economic Crisis:
Years of economic mismanagement culminated in a major economic crisis in 2022. It led to a foreign currency shortage, making it difficult for the Sri Lankan government to pay for the import of basic items like oil. IMF and other countries, including India offered multiple aids and multiple occasions.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced into temporary exile after protesters stormed his official residence in 2022, following months of street protests over the island nation’s worst-ever economic crisis.
Former PM Ranil Wickremesinghe assumed the power as the acting President following Rajapaksa’s resignation. He was then selected as the President by the Sri Lankan Parliament. In two years, the country has attempted to strike loan deals with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and countries like India and China.
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