Dinesh Gunawardena, a 72-year-old man, has been appointed as Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister. On Friday, the Speaker of the House in Parliament took the Oath of office. In the preceding Gotabaya-Mahinda administration, he served as the “minister of international“ affairs and education.
Gunawardena, 73, a political mainstay in Sri Lanka, formerly held the positions of foreign minister and minister of education. At the time, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed him to the position of Home Minister in April. After Wickremesinghe, 73, was inaugurated in as the nation’s “ninth president” on Thursday.
Soon after Gotabaya Rajapaksa departed the country and later announced his resignation as president, the position of prime minister became vacant. He has urged bipartisan cooperation to overcome the nation’s enormous economic catastrophe.
If all political parties agree to participate, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is facing vehement popular resistance to his elevation to the position of leader of the country, may pursue a national government. In that case, he may later name a new prime minister.
“Dinesh Gunawardena, a political mainstay in Sri Lanka, is renowned for his straightforwardness. He is a close confidant of former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and between 2015 and 2019, he led the opposition jointly while Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe were in power. He opposed President Ranil Wickremesinghe for decades, but by a stroke of luck, he is now Prime Minister of Sri Lanka“.
Dinesh Gunawardena, a trade union leader and ardent warrior like his illustrious father Philip Gunawardena, who is regarded as the “father of socialism” in Sri Lanka, who studied in the United States and the Netherlands.
About Dinesh Gunawardena’s Father Philip Gunawardena :
The early 1920s in the USA saw the beginning of Philip Gunawardena’s love for India and his fight for liberation against imperial occupation. He attended the same university as Jayaprakash Narayan and VK Krishna Menon in Wisconsin, where he promoted imperialism-freedom in American political circles and afterwards served as the leader of the Anti-Imperialist League of India in London. But few are aware of his family’s strong ties to India and support for the country as a whole.
During the Second World War, the Prime Minister’s mother Kusuma and father Philip fled from Ceylon, a British territory, and snuck into India.
They had joined the anti-authoritarian activists operating in secret, where they had managed to avoid capture for some time. Both of them were detained at the Arthur Road jail in Bombay after being arrested by British Intelligence in 1943. They were transferred to Sri Lanka after a year and only released at the end of the conflict.
He is extremely proud of the fact that Kusuma, Robert, and Philip all took part in the war for “Indian independence” and were imprisoned in Bombay. They began working together with India about a century ago to rid South Asia of the British Raj.
In order to personally thank them for their unwavering support of India’s liberation cause and their personal sacrifice, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first Prime Minister, travelled to their family’s house in Sri Lanka.
For more than 22 years, Dinesh Gunawardena, “a powerful cabinet minister with a spotless reputation like his parents, has pushed for improved relations with India. India has been Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour for thousands of years, and it is crucial to retain the strong relationship. And in terms of culture, society, history, and even mythology. Some of his close friends claim that there will be a lot more to do in the upcoming days”.
News From : CRUCIAL NEWS GLOBAL
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