WEB DESK
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has announced he will step down after protesters stormed his official residence and set the prime minister’s house on fire last night. Neither the Prime Minister nor the President were present in the buildings. Lakhs of people descended on the capital Colombo, calling for Mr Rajapaksa to resign after months of protests over economic mismanagement.
Mr Rajapaksa will step down on 13 July. PM Wickremesinghe has also agreed to resign.
Parliamentary speaker Mahinda Abeywardana said the President decided to step down to ensure a peaceful handover of power. He had requested the public to respect the law and maintain peace.
The protesters, who was demonstrating at the president’s house, said it was time to get rid of the president and the prime minister and to have a new era for Sri Lanka.
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s home was set on fire on last evening after protesters broke in. Crowds had earlier overrun the official residence of Mr Rajapaksa too.
Sri Lanka is suffering rampant inflation and is struggling to import food, fuel and medicine as it faces its worst economic crisis in 70 years. The country has also run out of foreign currency and has had to impose a ban on sales of petrol and diesel for private vehicles.
PM Wickremesinghe announces he will resign to make way for all-party govt amid protests
Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to make way for an all-party government to take over in the country. The Prime Minister’s Media Division said that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe will resign after an all-party government is established and the majority is secured in Parliament. His office had said that Mr. Wickremesinghe will continue as Prime Minister until then.
Mr. Wickremesinghe called an emergency meeting with party leaders in order to control the current situation today as the protestors stormed the official residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
According to local media reports, the meeting was also attended by the Speaker where the ministers urged Mr. Rajapaksa to tender his resignation in order to stabilise the situation in the country. Amid reports of the President fleeing to some other place, a government spokesman, Mohana Samaranayake, said he had no information about Mr. Rajapaksa’s whereabouts.
Earlier this month, newly-appointed Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said that the nation was targeting 5 billion dollar for repayments and 1 billion dollar to support the country’s reserves. He said that the discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are currently going on and was optimistic that the negotiations would conclude this month. Further, he clarified that the debt restructuring has already begun after the appointment of financial and legal advisors.
Thousands of protesters in Colombo stormed the president’s official residence and secretariat today amid months of mounting public anger over the country’s worst economic crisis in seven decades. Military personnel and police were unable to hold back the crowd, as they chanted slogans asking President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down.
On 8 July, an indefinite curfew was imposed across Sri Lanka’s capital and the military placed on alert ahead of a planned rally demanding the ouster of the embattled President.