ECONOMYNEXT – Ashoka Ranwala was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the 10th Sri Lanka Parliament after his party, the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) recorded a landslide in the parliamentary poll last week.
A chemical engineer by profession with a PhD degree, Ramwala has been in the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which is the key coalition partner of the MPP and led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, since his young age.
He has served as the Convenor of the Trade Union Collective for Conservation of Fuel Resources and led protests against the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) losing its monopoly to state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in the past.
He is a graduate from University of Moratuwa as a Chemical Engineer and was employed at the island nation’s only Iran-built CPC’s Sapugaskanda Refinery.
He represented the JVP in the Biyagama local government body once and Western Provincial Council twice as an elected member.
has also completed his PhD in Biochemistry from Waseda University, Japan.
In January 2018 just before the local government elections, he was arrested over charges of allegedly threatening Sapusgaskanda Crimes Officer in Charge (OIC). However, he later said he was assaulted by Sapusgaskanda Crimes police when he was questioned regarding an assault of a youth in the area.
He contested in Gampaha district and was elected for the first time to the parliament with 109,332 preferential votes. (Colombo/November 21/2024)