evidence: Following Wednesday’s secret ballot, Wickremesinghe can stay on as President up until 2024, when the current presidential term ends. But he is deeply unpopular among the Sri Lankan public. "[Protesters] see him as continuing the same policies of Gotabaya," says Bhavani Fonseka, a human rights lawyer and senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, the capital. If Wickremesinghe can hold onto power, his main tasks will be restoring political and economic stability. "Both are mammoth tasks. But you won’t be able to get much stability if there are continued protests and if the protesters are not satisfied this uncertainty will continue," Fonseka adds. [...] Wickremesinghe said Monday that Sri Lanka had almost finalized an agreement with the IMF for economic assistance. But that assistance could come with strings attached that are painful to ordinary Sri Lankans, including cuts to the public sector that employs around 1.5 of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people, and floating the rupee, which could drastically increase the costs of imports.