The day after a very tense day, the situation remains uncertain this Sunday in Sri Lanka. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed on Saturday to step down next week, after being forced to flee his crowded residence in the wake of monster protests in Colombo sparked by the catastrophic crisis hitting the country.
The United States on Sunday urged the country’s future new leaders to “work quickly” on solutions to restore economic stability and address popular discontent over deteriorating economic conditions, “including shortages of electricity, food and fuel,” a State Department spokesperson said.
“To ensure a peaceful transition, the president said he would resign on July 13,” parliament speaker Mahinda Abeywardana said on Saturday on television.
Two people close to the president resigned without delay: the head of the press service Sudewa Hettiarachchi and the media minister Bandula Gunawardana, who also left his post at the head of the presidential party.
For his part, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe tried to pave the way for a government of national unity, by urgently convening a government crisis meeting with the opposition parties to which he proposed his resignation.
But that was not enough to calm the anger of the demonstrators who in the evening besieged his residence, in his absence, and set fire to it, without causing any injuries.
Live images on social networks
Earlier, President Rajapaksa, in the hot seat for months, had just enough time to flee a few minutes before several hundred demonstrators entered the presidential palace, a symbolic building normally reserved for receptions but where he had moved in April after his private home was stormed.
VIDEO. Sri Lanka: the president on the run, demonstrators invade his palace and… his swimming pool
“The president has been escorted to a safe place,” a defense source told AFP. Soldiers guarding the official residence fired in the air to deter protesters from approaching the palace until it was evacuated.
According to this source, the president boarded a military ship heading for the territorial waters in the south of the island.
Local TV stations showed footage of hundreds of people climbing the gates of his palace. Protesters then streamed live videos on social media of the crowds marching inside, some enjoying themselves in the presidential pool or in the bedrooms.
“This is Gotabaya’s room, here are the underwear he left,” raved a young man, brandishing black underpants on a live video, shared on social networks.
The protesters also took over the offices of the presidency nearby, in front of which demonstrators had been camping for three months.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters
Once a middle-income country with a standard of living envied by India, Sri Lanka has been devastated by the loss of tourism revenue following a jihadist attack in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The crisis, unprecedented since independence in 1948 of this island of 22 million inhabitants, has been aggravated, according to economists, by a series of bad political decisions, of which the presidential clan in power since 2005 is accused by the population. .
Demonstrations to demand the resignation of Mr. Rajapaksa gathered hundreds of thousands of people on Saturday, demonstrators having even forced the railway authorities to transport them by train, while the country has almost no more gasoline.
Three people were wounded by bullets when the police tried to disperse the crowd massed in the administrative district of the capital, with a lot of tear gas.
Galloping inflation, shortages, Sri Lanka lacks everything: gasoline, electricity, food, medicine.
The country is negotiating a rescue plan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), likely to impose tax increases. The United Nations estimates that around 80% of the population is forced to skip meals.