Sri Lanka will not extend state of emergency this week

The president of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has announced that he will not extend the state of emergency decreed in July and that, therefore, it will expire this Thursday, after the application of this exceptional measure was criticized by human rights organizations.

Wickremesinghe considers that the circumstances to prolong the state of emergency no longer exist and has promised to carry out a series of reforms to alleviate the social discontent, among them to give more power to the Parliament and to change the electoral system, according to the Ceylonese newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’.

The current president assumed the reins of Sri Lanka after the departure of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, besieged by unprecedented mobilizations with which citizens clamored against the worst economic crisis in recent decades. Last week marked four months since the start of these demonstrations, with a decline in participation in the protests.

According to the opposition, however, the appointment as president of Wickremesinghe, an old acquaintance who already held the post of prime minister in up to five different stages, is nothing more than a patch to the biggest crisis facing the island’s inhabitants since it broke its chains with the United Kingdom.