As protests intensified over the devastating economic crisis in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is due to tender his resignation today, left the country and arrived in the Maldives early today. Earlier this week, Rajapaksa fled his residence to seek a safer place as protesters stormed his official residence in Colombo.
1) Pressure mounted on Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the economic slowdown led to acute shortages of essential commodities, leaving people struggling to buy food, fuel and other necessities.
2) President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, His wife and two bodyguards boarded a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for the Maldivian capital city of Male, according to an immigration official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
3) Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he will leave once the new government is formed.
4) Don’t get sick or get into an accident: that’s the advice doctor in sri lanka patients are giving. “Don’t get sick, don’t get injured, don’t do anything that makes you go to hospital for unnecessary treatment,” said Sri Lanka Medical Association president Samath Dharmaratne. This, this is a serious situation.”
5) Protests against the economic crisis have been going on for months and came to the fore last weekend as hundreds of thousands of people stormed major government buildings in Colombo.
6) Rajapaksa offered to step down on July 13, parliamentary speaker Mahinda Abhaywardhan said in a televised statement, news agency AFP reported.
7) Sri Lankan MPs agreed to elect a new President. The new president will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024, and could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by parliament.
8) Protesters accused the president and his relatives of extorting money from the state exchequer over the years, and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy.
9) The country is dependent on aid from India and other countries as leaders try to negotiate a bailout with the International Monetary Fund. Wickremesinghe recently said that talks with the IMF were complicated as Sri Lanka was now a bankrupt state.
10) Sri Lanka announced in April that it was suspending the repayment of foreign loans due to lack of foreign currency. Its total external debt is $51 billion, of which it will have to pay $28 billion by the end of 2027.
– with agency input
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