Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe unveiled a programme on Saturday that he described as a plan for Sri Lanka’s future, proposing a new constitution and a new electoral system under which 125 Members of Parliament would be elected from electorates, Daily Mirror reported.
Wickremesinghe said discussions were under way with all political parties excluding the National People’s Power, the governing party, to work towards a common national agenda.
He said responsibilities under the programme would ultimately be handed to the younger generation.
What 125 electorate seats would mean
Sri Lanka’s Parliament currently seats 225 members, elected largely by proportional representation from multi-member districts, with 29 filled from national lists. A move to 125 members elected from electorates would be a return to first-past-the-post constituency voting and a near-halving of the chamber.
Daily Mirror does not report how many total seats the proposed Parliament would have, whether the remaining seats would be filled proportionally or by national list, or how the electorates would be drawn.
The remarks two days earlier
Wickremesinghe had told an audience of young people on Thursday, at an event in Colombo marking the 120th birth anniversary of the late President J. R. Jayewardene, that he is not positioned to return to office, Daily Mirror reported separately.
Asked by a young questioner whether he was prepared to take over the country again, he said: “I cannot take over the nation now as I am not in Parliament.”
“Youth should be prepared to take leadership. I don’t know how Gen Z thinks of politics. The thinking pattern of my generation will not help the country now,” he said. He noted Sri Lanka will mark 100 years of independence in a few years, and that the new generation would have to decide what the country should achieve by then.
His economic warning
Wickremesinghe repeated that the country is heading for another downturn.
“People had to spend their savings during the years 2022 and 2023. They had to spend the money they had hidden under their mattresses. Their savings are gone today. Inflation has increased. One has to sell the mattress you sleep on to survive today,” he said.
Defending the decision to take office during the 2022 Aragalaya protests, he said: “If no one accepted the responsibility of running the country during the ‘Aragalaya’ in 2022, the future of the nation would have been bleak. We knew that the country could be re-stabilised. Therefore, we took over the responsibility without fear.”
He also recalled Jayewardene telling him, during protests against an education white paper he had introduced, to wait — advice he summarised as learning patience. “One cannot achieve victory without defeat. One cannot hold on to victory forever. One has to let go of power and go to opposition in politics.”
Not reported
Daily Mirror does not say where or to whom the programme was unveiled, which parties are in the discussions or how many have agreed to join, or whether the proposals have any parliamentary vehicle. Wickremesinghe is not currently an MP, and the report does not address how a constitutional change would be advanced without one.
No timetable is given, and the NPP’s exclusion is stated without explanation from either side.
