COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the country’s previous administration was “covering up facts” about its crippling financial crisis.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, shared with The Arabian Stories, Wickremesinghe said former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government did not tell the truth, that Sri Lanka was “bankrupt” and “needed to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” Wickremesinghe told CNN from parliament in the nation’s administrative capital Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.

The acting president also told CNN’s Will Ripley, “I would like to tell the people I know what they are suffering.” He added, “We have gone back. We have to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. We don’t need five years or 10 years. By the end of next year let’s start stabilizing, and certainly by 2024 let’s have a functioning economy which will start growing.”
 
Since March, Sri Lanka has been brought to its knees by a growing economic crisis that has left the country struggling to buy essential imports, including fuel, food and medicine. Protesters have taken to the streets to demand the resignations of the country’s leaders and last week appeared to have scored a victory when Rajapaksa fled the country days after thousands of demonstrators stormed his residence. Wickremesinghe’s private residence was set on fire by angry protesters shortly after.

Wickremesinghe — prime minister at the time — vowed to resign to make way for a unity government. He told CNN that his torched home and much of its contents were not salvageable. He lost more than 4,000 books, including some that were centuries old and a 125-year-old piano was also destroyed in the fire, Wickremesinghe said.
 
But despite this, Wickremesinghe is vying to be Sri Lanka’s next president, with parliament set to elect a new leader on Wednesday. He reiterated his desire to compete for the top position, telling CNN that he was “not the same administration”, adding, “I’m not the same, people know that. I came here to handle the economy.”