- President Rajapaksa flees hours before the planned resignation
- Protesters are demanding the removal of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
- Wickremesinghe declares the emergency as interim president-spokesman
- The opposition denounces the Wickremesinghe movement
COLOMBO, July 13 (Reuters) – Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday, hours before his resignation after the popular uprising over a devastating economic crisis ended his family’s control over the island nation.
Later that day, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency and curfew with immediate effect, as several hundred people demanding his resignation surrounded his office in Colombo. Police fired several rounds of tear gas and a military helicopter spun briefly over his head, but protesters did not appear discouraged.
“The prime minister as acting president has declared a state of emergency (nationwide) and imposed a curfew on the western province,” Wickremesinghe media secretary Dinouk Colombage told Reuters. The western province includes Colombo.
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The speaker of parliament said Rajapaksa had approved Wickremesinghe as president, citing a section of the constitution that deals with times when the president cannot perform his duties.
The president’s flight puts an end to the government of the powerful Rajapaksa clan that has dominated politics in the South Asian country for the past two decades.
Protests against the economic crisis have been brewing for months and culminated last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over key government buildings in Colombo, blaming the Rajapaksas and their allies for inflation. rampant, corruption and a severe shortage of fuel and medicines. Read more
Government sources and aides said the president’s brothers, former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, were still in Sri Lanka.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards left the main international airport near Colombo on Wednesday aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane, the air force said in a statement.
A government source and a person close to Rajapaksa said he was in Male, the capital of the Maldives. The president would likely proceed to another Asian country from there, the government source said.
Rajapaksa was due to resign as president on Wednesday to give way to a unity government. Read more
Sri Lanka has been ruled by the powerful Rajapaksa family for most of the last two decades. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president of the country in November 2019.
Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, the speaker, told Reuters partner ANI that she had not yet received any communication from Rajapaksa about her resignation. A ruling party source said the president will send a resignation letter Wednesday later.
Protesters gather in front of the office of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe amid the country’s economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on July 13, 2022. REUTERS / Adnan Abidi
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Wickremesinghe has also offered to resign as prime minister. If he does, he will be the acting President until a new President is elected on 20 July as planned.
Protest leaders, however, say the prime minister is an ally of the Rajapaksas and have warned of a “decisive struggle” if he does not resign.
“We are firmly against the Gota-Ranil government. Both must leave,” said Buddhi Prabodha Karunaratne, one of the organizers of the recent protests.
VICTIM OF THE PANDEMIC
Amid economic and political chaos, prices for Sri Lanka’s sovereign bonds hit new all-time lows on Wednesday.
The U.S. embassy in Colombo, located in the city’s central district, said it was canceling consular services for the afternoon and Thursday as a precautionary measure.
The island nation’s tourism-dependent economy was hit first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then suffered a drop in Sri Lanka’s remittances abroad. The ban on chemical fertilizers affected production, although it was later reversed. Read more
The Rajapaksas implemented populist tax cuts in 2019 that affected government finances while the reduction in foreign reserves reduced imports of fuel, food and medicine.
Gasoline has been heavily rationed and long queues have formed in front of gas stalls for cooking. Global inflation reached 54.6% last month and the central bank has warned it could rise to 70% in the coming months.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s older brother, resigned as prime minister in May after protests against the family turned violent. He remained hidden in a military base in the east of the country for a few days before returning to Colombo.
Media reports in the Maldives, a series of islands in the Indian Ocean west of Sri Lanka, said Rajapaksa had arrived in the country early on Wednesday, although Reuters was unable to verify. independently.
A Maldives government spokesman did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
On Tuesday, Sri Lankan immigration officials prevented Basil Rajapaksa from leaving the country. Read more
It was not clear where Basil Rajapaksa was trying to go, who also has American citizenship. He resigned as finance minister in early April amid heavy street protests and left his seat in parliament in June.
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Additional report by Kanishka Singh, Krishna Das and Alasdair Pal; Written by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Sam Holmes, Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill
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