AA / Istanbul
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa left the country on Wednesday on a military plane amid massive popular protests against deteriorating economic conditions.
According to local news reports, relaying the statements of officials (whose names were not mentioned), Rajapaksa, his wife and his bodyguard headed for the Maldives.
Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament, Mahinda Abiwardana, announced last Saturday that Rajapaksa had agreed to announce his resignation today, July 13.
This new fact comes two days after the storming of the presidential palace, in the capital Colombo, by thousands of demonstrators, and the burning of the home of the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also agreed to resign after forming a multiparty government.
Parliament is due to hold a meeting on July 15 and elect a new president on July 20.
Sri Lanka has suffered severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine for several months, in the worst economic crisis since the country’s independence in 1948. The coronavirus pandemic has caused a significant drop in income from tourism and remittances from expatriates to the country.
Heavily indebted countries are also facing deteriorating economic and financial conditions, resulting from rising debt service, declining financial income resulting from the impact of the epidemic, and the inability to import. due to declines in foreign exchange reserves.
* Translated from Arabic by Mounir Bennour.
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