THREE former presidents of Sri Lanka expressed solidarity with jailed ex-leader Ranil Wickremesinghe last Sunday (24) and condemned his incarceration as a “calculated assault” on democracy.
The former political rivals of Wickremesinghe, who was president between July 2022 and September 2024, said the charges against him were frivolous and politically motivated.
Wickremesinghe has been accused of using $55,000 (£40,780) in state funds for a stopover in Britain while returning home after a G77 summit in Havana and the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2023.
The 76-year-old was rushed to the intensive care unit of the main staterun hospital in Colombo last Saturday (23), just a day after being remanded in custody. Doctors said he was suffering from severe dehydration on top of acute diabetes and long-standing high blood pressure.
“What we are witnessing is a calculated onslaught on the very essence of our democratic values,” former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, 80, said in a statement.
Her successor Mahinda Rajapaksa, 79, also expressed solidarity with Wickremesinghe and visited him in prison last Saturday, shortly before he was moved to intensive care.
Maithripala Sirisena, 73, who sacked Wickremesinghe from the prime minister’s post in October 2018 before being forced by the Supreme Court to reinstate him 52 days later, described the jailing as a witch hunt.
Wickremesinghe’s own United National Party (UNP) said last Saturday it believed he was being prosecuted out of fear that he could stage a comeback.
He lost the presidential election in September to Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the current head of state.
Wickremesinghe was arrested as part of Dissanayake’s campaign against endemic corruption in the country.
He has maintained that his wife’s travel expenses in Britain were met by her personally and that no state funds were used.
