COLOMBO (Dispatches) – Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s announcement that he would resign on July 13 has failed to appease the public, as calls for him to step down immediately continued on Sunday, a day after protesters stormed the presidential palace and thousands of people descended on the capital Colombo.
The island nation of 22 million people is facing its worst economic crisis in memory, triggered by a severe shortage of foreign reserves that has stalled essential imports. Sri Lankans have suffered through months of food and fuel shortages that forced schools to shut and led to record inflation, reaching 54.6 percent in June.
Nationwide protests have rippled amid the devastation, with many campaigning outside the president’s office since March to demand Rajapaksa’s resignation. Many hold the leader responsible for the country’s economic meltdown.
The demonstrations reached new heights on Saturday, when thousands of people marched to Colombo and hundreds of others stormed into the presidential complex and later the premier’s house, forcing Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to announce their resignations.
Rajapaksa’s resignation was announced by parliamentary speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena.
Video and pictures showed people who had entered Sri Lanka’s president’s residence splashing in the garden pool, lying on beds and using their cellphone cameras to capture the moment.
Some made tea or used the gym while others issued statements from a conference room demanding that the president and prime minister go.
If both president and prime minister resign, Abeywardena will take over as temporary president, according to the constitution.
Rajapaksa had been a popular figure among Sri Lanka’s powerful Sinhala Buddhist majority, who credit him with ending the country’s 26-year-long civil war in 2009.
However, as the tourism industry, the island-nation’s economic mainstay, declined due to the global COVID pandemic, his popularity waned as well.
The island of 22 million people is struggling with its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948 amid a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine.