The former president imprisoned by Sri Lanka was urgently taken to intensive care in a state hospital on Saturday, a day after being accused of improper use of government funds for foreign trips.
Ranil WickRemesinghe, who was arrested on Friday night, was severely dehydrated and required nearby monitoring, said the deputy director general of the National Hospital of Colombo to the Colombo Hospital. AFP.
“It has to be observed and treated acute for acute dehydration to prevent serious complications,” said Rukshan Bellana. “He was a severe diabetic with high blood pressure when they brought him.”
Bellana said, however, that Wickremesinghe’s condition was “stable.”
The former president was taken to the main state hospital of Sri Lanka, since his condition deteriorated and the prison medical center was not equipped to treat him, said a prison spokesman.
The opposition legislators who visited Wickremesinghe, 76, in prison, reported that he had been in a good mood.
The opposition parties have accused the government of imprisoning him for fear that he can return to power.
Anti -corruption drive
Wickremesinghe lost the latest presidential elections in September 2024 against Anura Kumara Dissanayake, but has remained politically active despite not occupying any chosen position.
It was arrested Friday as part of the Dissanayake campaign against endemic corruption in the island nation, which is emerging from its worst economic collapse in 2022.
Nalin Bandara, a member of the Parliament for the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), which visited WickRemesinghe in the new prison of Colombo magazine, said the former leader had asked Unity to challenge the leftist government of Disanayake.
“What the former president says is that we should reach a common stage to combat the oppression of the new government,” Bandara told journalists outside the prison.
The United National Party of Wickremesinghe (UNP), which has two seats in the Parliament of 225 members, said the government felt threatened by the former president.
“They fear that I can return to power, and that is why this action,” said UNP General Secretary Thalatha Athukorala, to journalists in Colombo.
Wickremesinghe is accused of using state funds to finance a private visit to Great Britain in September 2023, while returning from attending the G77 summit in Havana and the UN General Assembly in New York.
The crimes have a maximum punishment of 20 years in jail and a fine that does not exceed three times the value of the embezzlement funds, estimated at 16.6 million rupees of Sri Lanka ($ 55,000).
His two -day visit in the United Kingdom was to participate in the conference of an honorary profession about his wife, Maithree, from the University of Wolverhampton. Wickremesinghe has maintained that his wife’s travel expenses were fulfilled by her and that state funds were not used.
Wickremesinghe became president in July 2022 after the then leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned after months of street protests fed by the economic crisis.
