Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa Flees As Demonstrators Surround Residence: Report

Protesters have infiltrated the President's house, according to the Sri Lanka-based Daily Mirror.

Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Source : Getty Images

Protesters besieged Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's home on Saturday, forcing him to flee, as per the defence sources, news agency AFP reported.

Protesters have infiltrated the President's house, according to the Sri Lanka-based Daily Mirror.

Live update from Colombo Fort. pic.twitter.com/SVmhGVWJ4R

— DailyMirror (@Dailymirror_SL) July 9, 2022

According to Reuters, video footage from the local TV news channel NewsFirst showed demonstrators carrying Sri Lankan flags and helmets breaking into the president's residence.

According to Reuters, police fired rounds into the air but were unable to stop the irate throng from encircling the presidential residence.

“Thousands of protestors have reached the main entrance of the President’s House in Fort after putting down layers of barricades and the police were seen withdrawing from the area. Shots were heard being fired in the air and continuous rounds of tear gas is being fired,” it said in a report.

Thousands of demonstrators have been asking for Rajapaksa's resignation since March, when it was revealed that Sri Lanka was in the grip of a serious economic crisis. Since then, the country's gasoline prices have skyrocketed due to the country's inability to receive cargoes. As the situation worsened, schools were shuttered and gasoline, diesel, and cooking fuel were rationed.

For the uninitiated, Sri Lanka now has a $51 billion foreign debt. Persistent fiscal deficits, a major 2019 tax cut package, and the horrors of the COVID-19 outbreak have rendered Sri Lanka's public debt load unsustainable, while the collapse of tourism has resulted in a drop in foreign exchange earnings.

Colombo has announced that it would stop repayment of foreign debts after its foreign currency reserves fell below $50 million.

According to the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, this, along with food and energy price shocks earlier this year, exacerbated by the Ukraine war, has resulted in a debt and balance-of-payments crisis.

Sri Lanka is currently required to pay $7 billion in foreign loans by the end of this year, and $25 billion by 2026.

(With Inputs From Agencies)