New WPC Chief Minister takes oaths today

Rasika Somarathna

Prasanna Ranatunge, who obtained the highest number of preferential votes for the winners - the UPFA at the Western Provincial Council polls, will take oaths before President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat today as the new Chief Minister of the Western Province.

Ranatunge, hailing from a well-known political and cricketing family, topped the UPFA preferential vote list in his electorate Gampaha and the Western Province as a whole obtaining 186,338 votes. His father Reggie Ranatunge and elder brother Arjuna Ranatunge (former Sri Lankan cricket captain) have held various portfolios including Ministerial ones under the present Government and earlier SLFP led regimes.

Prasanna is considered as the third Ranatunge to enter politics in Sri Lanka following in the footsteps of his father and elder brother. According to Presidential media sources, along with the Chief Minister, four other new appointees too are scheduled to take oaths before the President today, as Ministers of the Western Provincial Council.

The first session of the newly elected Western Provincial Council is to be held on May 21.