New President vows tough line against troublemakers

Sri Lanka’s president-elect vowed on Wednesday to take tough action against anyone resorting to what he called the undemocratic means that led to his predecessor’s ouster.

Six-time prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he will not bow to violence after winning a parliamentary vote to succeed Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country and resigned last week.

“If you try to topple the government, occupy the president’s office and the prime minister’s office, that is not democracy, it is against the law,” Wickremesinghe said after praying at a Buddhist temple in the capital Colombo.

Wickremesinghe is widely seen as a proxy of the once powerful Rajapaksa family, but he denied that he was friends with them. “I am not a friend of the Rajapaksas,” he told reporters at the Gangaramaya temple.