Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Kalutara District Parliamentarian Mahinda Samarasinghe is due to resign in December from Parliament to take up a new post as the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States and Mexico. He will tender his resignation on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sources said.
MP Samarasinghe will succeed Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, who retired from public service recently. Upon joining the Sri Lanka Foreign Service, MP Samarasinghe served as the First Secretary to the Sri Lanka High Commission in Australia and as Counsellor for the Sri Lankan Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva in the 1980s. He held several portfolios as a minister including Ports and Shipping, Human Rights, Vocational Training and Finance in the Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa Governments. He recently served on the Committee on Public Accounts and earlier in the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Foreign Affairs. SLPP member Lalith Warnakumar who is next in line in preferential votes in the Kalutara district will be sworn in as MP in place of Mahinda Samarasinghe.