COLOMBO: A wave of anger swept Sri Lanka on Wednesday after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has promised to step down, won a vote in parliament to be the country’s next president until 2024.
MPs voted to choose a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the ousted president who fled the country on July 13 to escape a popular uprising over the role his family — Sri Lanka’s most influential political dynasty — played in the country’s worst-ever economic meltdown.
Protests flared in Colombo in March and have spread across the country since people have been struggling with daily power cuts and shortages of basic commodities, such as fuel, food and medicines, as the country’s foreign currency reserves have run out, leaving it unable to pay for imports.
When Rajapaksa left, he made his ally Wickremesinghe acting president, a decision that triggered more protests.
Wednesday’s vote was held to choose a new president to complete Rajapaksa’s term, which expires in 2024.
The 225-member parliament gave 134 votes to Wickremesinghe and 82 to the other main candidate, ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party lawmaker Dullas Alahapperuma, who was supported by the opposition. A third candidate, Anura Dissanayaka, leader of the Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, received only three votes.
“I have been in the legislature for 43 years, and I know the problems faced by the country as well as by the people,” Wickremesinghe said in parliament after the election.
“Let us be united to take the country forward for the betterment of the nation. Let us chalk out a new road map to develop the country and the participation of all parties and rescue the people.”
Wickremesinghe was appointed prime minister in May, after Rajapaksa’s elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was forced to resign when anti-government demonstrations turned deadly. He also took on the role of finance minister, becoming the public face of the country’s economic woes.
A seasoned lawmaker, Wickremesinghe has been prime minister six times but has never completed his term. He announced on July 9 that he was willing to step down and allow an all-party government to take over after thousands of protesters descended on the capital Colombo in one of the largest anti-government marches in the crisis-hit country this year.
As Wickremesinghe will be sworn in as president on Thursday, protesters said they would continue to demonstrate, as they gathered in front of the Presidential Secretariat despite a state of emergency being in place since last week.
Namal Jayaweera, leader of the protest movement, told Arab News at the demonstration site that people are “angry and disappointed over this election, and they feel that their representatives in the parliament have let them down.”
“His election as president is as good as one of the Rajapaksa coming to power which means all our efforts are in vain,” Jayaweera said. “We will intensify our protests undaunted in the coming days to remove him from office.”
Senaka Perera, a prominent lawyer representing the protesters, told Arab News they were not going to accept the result of the parliament vote as Wickremesinghe’s appointment was “against the wishes of the public.”
“Wickremesinghe will continue to follow the orders of the Rajapaksa family,” Perera said.
“Ranil Wickremesinghe has been brought in by the Rajapaksa regime. Therefore, our peaceful protests will go on against Ranil Wickremesinghe and the corrupt system.”
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Anger sweeps Sri Lanka after parliament votes in Ranil Wickremesinghe as president
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Anger sweeps Sri Lanka after parliament votes in Ranil Wickremesinghe as president
- Parliament chose Wickremesinghe to complete ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term
- Demonstrators say they will intensify their protests
Germany eyes lasers, spy satellites in military space spending splurge
SINGAPORE: Germany is weighing investments ranging from spy satellites and space planes to offensive lasers under a 35 billion euro ($41 billion) military space spending plan aimed at countering growing threats from Russia and China in orbit, the country’s space commander said.
Germany will build an encrypted military constellation of more than 100 satellites, known as SATCOM Stage 4, over the next few years, the head of German Space Command Michael Traut told Reuters on the sidelines of a space event ahead of the Singapore Airshow.
He said the network would mirror the model used by the US Space Development Agency, a Pentagon unit that deploys low-Earth-orbit satellites for communications and missile tracking.
Rheinmetall is in talks with German satellite maker OHB about a joint bid for an unnamed German military satellite project, Reuters reported last week.
The potential deal comes as Europe’s top three space firms — Airbus, Thales and Leonardo — are seeking to build a European satellite communications alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Traut said Germany’s investment in military space architecture reflected a sharply more contested space environment since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Berlin and its European allies, he said, needed to bolster their deterrence posture by investing not only in secure communications but also in capabilities that could hinder or disable hostile space systems.
“(We need to) improve our deterrence posture in space, since space has become an operational or even warfighting domain, and we are perfectly aware that our systems, our space capabilities, need to be protected and defended,” Traut said.
INSPECTOR SATELLITES AND LASERS
Germany will channel funding into intelligence-gathering satellites, sensors and systems designed to disrupt adversary spacecraft, including lasers and equipment capable of targeting ground-based infrastructure, Traut said.
He added that Germany would prioritize small and large domestic and European suppliers for the program.
Traut emphasized Germany would not field destructive weapons in orbit that could generate debris, but said a range of non-kinetic options existed to disrupt hostile satellites, including jamming, lasers and actions against ground control stations.
He also pointed to so-called inspector satellites — small spacecraft capable of maneuvering close to other satellites — which he said Russia and China had already deployed.
“There is a broad range of possible effects in the electromagnetic spectrum, in the optical, in the laser spectrum, and even some active physical things like inspector satellites,” he said.
“You could even go after ground segments of a space system in order to deny that system to your adversary or to tell him, ‘If you do something to us in space, we might do something to you in other domains as well.’”
Germany will build an encrypted military constellation of more than 100 satellites, known as SATCOM Stage 4, over the next few years, the head of German Space Command Michael Traut told Reuters on the sidelines of a space event ahead of the Singapore Airshow.
He said the network would mirror the model used by the US Space Development Agency, a Pentagon unit that deploys low-Earth-orbit satellites for communications and missile tracking.
Rheinmetall is in talks with German satellite maker OHB about a joint bid for an unnamed German military satellite project, Reuters reported last week.
The potential deal comes as Europe’s top three space firms — Airbus, Thales and Leonardo — are seeking to build a European satellite communications alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Traut said Germany’s investment in military space architecture reflected a sharply more contested space environment since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Berlin and its European allies, he said, needed to bolster their deterrence posture by investing not only in secure communications but also in capabilities that could hinder or disable hostile space systems.
“(We need to) improve our deterrence posture in space, since space has become an operational or even warfighting domain, and we are perfectly aware that our systems, our space capabilities, need to be protected and defended,” Traut said.
INSPECTOR SATELLITES AND LASERS
Germany will channel funding into intelligence-gathering satellites, sensors and systems designed to disrupt adversary spacecraft, including lasers and equipment capable of targeting ground-based infrastructure, Traut said.
He added that Germany would prioritize small and large domestic and European suppliers for the program.
Traut emphasized Germany would not field destructive weapons in orbit that could generate debris, but said a range of non-kinetic options existed to disrupt hostile satellites, including jamming, lasers and actions against ground control stations.
He also pointed to so-called inspector satellites — small spacecraft capable of maneuvering close to other satellites — which he said Russia and China had already deployed.
“There is a broad range of possible effects in the electromagnetic spectrum, in the optical, in the laser spectrum, and even some active physical things like inspector satellites,” he said.
“You could even go after ground segments of a space system in order to deny that system to your adversary or to tell him, ‘If you do something to us in space, we might do something to you in other domains as well.’”
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