The arrest of former Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Friday triggered both outcry and praise for the administration of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Wickremesinghe, 76, is the first Sri Lankan former head of state to be arrested.
He has been accused of using around $55,000 in state funds for a stopover in Britain while returning home from a diplomatic trip to Havana and New York in September 2023.
Following his arrest on Friday, the ex-president was taken to Welikada prison in the suburbs of Colombo before being moved to the prison hospital and later the main state-run hospital in the city.
Ruwan Wijewardene, the deputy leader of Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), told DW Wickremesinghe was currently in the intensive care unit at Colombo General Hospital, having suffered from severe dehydration, diabetes and high blood pressure.
“He’s in stable condition now,” Wijewardene said. “He’s upbeat. He’s been through many challenges in his life, and this is one more challenge that he’s facing up to.”
Wickremesinghe’s next court hearing is scheduled for August 26.
Wickremesinghe gained power in time of crisis
In 2022, Wickremesinghe took office as Sri Lanka’s president, having previously served six stints as prime minister.
The country was going through massive economic upheaval at the time. Wickremesinghe became president in the wake of monthslong street protests which ousted the then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Wickremesinghe was credited with stabilizing the crumbling economy, but faced public backlash over stringent austerity measures, including raising taxes and utility costs.
In the presidential election held last September, Wickremesinghe lost to leftist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Two months later, Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) alliance won a landslide victory in the parliamentary election, giving him a mandate for a strong government.
‘Point of no-return’
Dissanayake’s administration promised to punish those accused of corruption under previous governments.
Over a dozen political leaders of the previous government and ex-high government officials have already been arrested and are under investigation for alleged corruption and malpractice. Even so, Wickremesinghe is the most high-profile politician to be investigated for corruption in Sri Lanka.
“This is the first time that a Sri Lankan head of state, or for that matter, head of government, has been charged in a criminal matter,” said Saliya Pieris, a criminal lawyer and former head of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka.
Pieris told DW he believed Wickremesinghe’s arrest was “crossing the Rubicon” and marked a “point of no return” in Sri Lanka but urged for caution in decisions to arrest and prosecute, saying there was a public perception that “the police do the will of the party in power.”
UNP deputy leader Wijewardene insists that Wickremesinghe had “never misused public funds” and Wickremesinghe’s wife, former First Lady Maithree Wickremesinghe, had paid for her own ticket to travel to the UK, with state money spent only on the then-president’s security.
Three former presidents, including Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, also expressed solidarity with Wickremesinghe and condemned his incarceration as a “calculated assault” on democracy.
However, lawyers for the ruling party held a press conference on Sunday, where they said a proper investigation was carried out ahead of the former president’s arrest, and criticized the opposition’s comments about it being politically motivated.
Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, told DW politicians had banded together because they “fear they could be next.”
Although some have slammed Wickremesinghe’s arrest, others see it as a sign of the NPP government’s commitment to tackling corruption.
Rajni Gamage, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, said Wickremesinghe’s arrest may herald similar moves against members of the politically dominant Rajapaksa family, who face accusations of nepotism, corruption and financial mismanagement.
