115 Fifth Lane (commonly known as Fifth Lane) is the home of

Ranil Wickremesinghe Ranil Wickremesinghe (; ; 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 a ...

, the former

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

and

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. It was built by Wickremesinghe's father, press baron Esmond Wickremesinghe. In his capacity as Prime Minister, Wickremesinghe continued to live at Fifth Lane, using the Prime Minister's official residence, Temple Trees, only for official functions during his time as Prime Minister, with the exception of the 2018 Sri Lankan constitutional crisis. During Wickremesinghe's tenure as opposition leader, he met many foreign dignitaries at Fifth Lane. The living room of Fifth Lane was badly damaged on 23 March 1965 when a bomb was thrown into the house and exploded moments after

Dudley Senanayake Dudley Shelton Senanayake (Sinhala language, Sinhala: ඩඩ්ලි ශෙල්ටන් සේනානායක: ; 19 June 1911 – 13 April 1973), was a Sri Lankan wikt:statesman, statesman who thrice served as Prime Minister of C ...

had left the premises while negotiations were underway to form a government. On July 9, 2022, protestors stormed the residence, in connection with the

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and the

economic crisis A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and ma ...

which was going on since 2019. Subsequently, Wickremesinghe stated his willingness to resign, in order to make way for an all-party government. The residence was broken in to by protestors and set on fire at just after 21:10 (16:40 BST). Wickremesinghe was not present during the arrival of protestors.

References

Buildings and structures demolished in 2022 Houses in Colombo Prime ministerial residences Ranil Wickremesinghe {{SriLanka-struct-stub

See also

References