Skip to content
Ranil Wickremesinghe

File:President_Dr_Muizzu_meets_Sri_Lankan_President_Ranil_Wickremesinghe_(cropped).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ983402· pop 56· linked from 1,160 articles

Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sign in to save

Also known as Ranil Wickramasinghe

9th President of Sri Lanka from July 2022 to September 2024

OverviewAI-generated

Ranil Wickremesinghe is a Sri Lankan politician and lawyer who has served as the Prime Minister and President of Sri Lanka. Born in Colombo in 1949, he is a member of the United National Party. His educational background includes studies at the University of Colombo, the University of Ceylon, and Royal College, Colombo. He speaks Sinhala, which is also his native language.

Wickremesinghe has held the position of head of government and President of the Republic. His professional affiliation is with the Office of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. He is the author of five works.

Synthesized by Vinony from 20 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Ranil Wickremesinghe (Sinhala: රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ; Tamil: ரணில் விக்கிரமசிங்க; born 24 March 1949) is a Sri Lankan politician who served as the ninth president of Sri Lanka from 2022 to 2024. He has also served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1993–1994, 2001–2004, 2015–2018, 2018-2019 and in 2022. Wickremesinghe has held several ministerial roles, including Minister of Finance, Minister of Defence, Minister of Technology and Minister of Women, Child Affairs and Social Empowerment. Wickremesinghe has led the United National Party (UNP) since 1994. He is also the eighth executive president of Sri Lanka, a role established by the 1977 constitutional amendment that expanded presidential powers.

Born into a political family, Wickremesinghe graduated from the University of Ceylon and qualified as a lawyer from the Ceylon Law College in 1972. He entered politics in the mid-1970s with the UNP, first being elected to Parliament in 1977. Over the years, he held various ministerial positions, including Minister of Foreign Affairs, Youth Affairs and Employment, and Industry, Science and Technology. He first became prime minister in 1993 following the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ranil Wickremesinghe” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (7)