A look at Thursday’s developments from crisis-hit Sri Lanka:

  1. United National Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was on Thursday sworn-in as Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, PTI reported. His predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had resigned as the prime minister on Monday amid protests due to an unprecedented economic crisis in the island country. Wickremesinghe was appointed as the prime minister by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Wickremesinghe has served as the country’s prime minister for four times. In October 2018, he was fired as the prime minister by then President Maithripala Sirisena. However, he was reinstated by Sirisena after two months.
  2. A Sri Lankan court banned former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and 16 others from travelling overseas in view of investigations into the violence in the island country, PTI reported. Thirteen legislators, including Rajapaksa, and the senior deputy inspector general of the country’s Western province are on the list of those barred from travelling abroad. The Sri Lankan Police’s Criminal Investigation Department had requested the Fort Magistrate’s Court to impose the ban.
  3. Namal Rajapaksa, the son of Mahinda Rajapaksa and a member of the Sri Lankan Parliament said he would cooperate with the investigation into the violence in the country on Monday in which at least eight persons were killed and more than 300 injured. Namal Rajapaksa is among those who have been barred from travelling abroad.
  4. The country’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday announced that he was ready to abolish the system of executive presidency in Sri Lanka, which gives him wide-ranging executive powers. On Wednesday evening, he had made the announcements in a televised address to the nation. 
  5. Many Sri Lankans thronged buses in the main city Colombo on Thursday to flee the city after the curfew was relaxed, Reuters reported. The curfew was imposed after the prime minister quit and went into hiding.