COLOMBO (NewsRadio); President Ranil Wickremesinghe has congratulated the newly appointed Prime Minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim.
The President’s Media Division said President Wickremesinghe extended his congratulations during a telephone conversation this morning.
The President has expressed his desire to further strengthen economic ties between Sri Lanka and Malaysia during the phone conversation.
Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as the Malaysian Prime Minister last week, capping a three-decade political journey from a protege of veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad to protest leader, a prisoner convicted of sodomy, and opposition leader.
Promising to give up his salary as the Prime Minister, he pledged to fight corruption and focus on the economy.
Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) party, which won the biggest share of seats in the vote, did not secure enough seats on its own to form a government.
It took five days of intense negotiations to reach an agreement on a new government, during which time various combinations of parties and forms of alliances were discussed, and then rejected. Many of the political leaders have personal and ideological differences which made it hard to find a workable majority.
In the end it was left to Malaysia’s constitutional monarch, King Abdullah, to summon all the leaders to the palace to try to find sufficient common ground.
Anwar said he would form a “national unity government” with the help of two other political groupings, giving him the majority he needs.
Accordingly, he was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Malaysia.
