Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa To Resign On July 13: Parliament Speaker | Top Developments
President Rajapaksa informed the Speaker about his decision to quit after Abeywardena wrote to him following the all-party meeting of leaders held Saturday evening which sought his resignation.
New Delhi: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would resign on Wednesday, Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena announced late Saturday night, hours after thousands of protesters stormed his official residence. President Rajapaksa informed the Speaker about this decision to quit after Abeywardena wrote to him following the all-party meeting of leaders held Saturday evening which sought his resignation. The party leaders had demanded the immediate resignation of President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to make way for Abeywardena to become acting president until Parliament appointed a successor.
Sri Lankan citizens have been blaming the Rajapaksa government for an unprecedented economic crisis that has brought the country to its knees.
Top Developments So Far:
- Thousands of protesters stormed the official residence of President Rajapaksa on Saturday. It is believed that President Rajapaksa left the house before the massive crowd arrived. Several videos of the protesters entering Rajapaksa's residence surfaced on social media. Protestors gathered inside the compound of Sri Lanka's Presidential Palace in Colombo. There were videos of people swimming in a pool inside the compound.
- PM Wickremesinghe expressed his willingness to resign after Speaker Abeywardena asked President Rajapaksa and the Prime Minister to quit immediately to make way for an all-party government as the country witnessed its biggest protest yet.
"To ensure the continuation of the Government including the safety of all citizens I accept the best recommendation of the Party Leaders today, to make way for an All-Party Government. To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister," he wrote on Twitter.To ensure the continuation of the Government including the safety of all citizens I accept the best recommendation of the Party Leaders today, to make way for an All-Party Government.
— Ranil Wickremesinghe (@RW_UNP) July 9, 2022
To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister. - After protestors stormed President's official residence, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had called an emergency meeting to seek a "quick resolution" to a potential power vacuum
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As per news agency PTI, Speaker Abeywardena in his letter to Rajapaksa informed him about the outcome of the party leaders’ meeting he had convened after which Wickremesinghe offered to resign and form an all-party government. The Speaker told Rajapaksa that party leaders sought for the Parliament to be convened in seven days to appoint an acting president, and appoint an interim all-party government under a new Prime Minister commanding majority in Parliament.
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It was also decided to call for elections within a short period of time and install a new government.
- A group of protesters on Saturday also entered the private residence of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and set it on fire.
- Sri Lankan Army chief General Shavendra Silva on Sunday said that an opportunity to resolve the current political crisis in a peaceful manner is now available as he sought the people's support to maintain peace in the island nation. In a brief statement, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Silva requested all Sri Lankans to support the Armed Forces and the Police to ensure that peace is maintained in the country, the Colombo Gazette news portal reported.
- The IMF on Sunday said that it was closely monitoring the ongoing developments in Sri Lanka and hoped that the political crisis will be resolved soon to allow for the resumption of dialogue on an IMF-supported programme in the cash-starved country. “We are closely monitoring the ongoing developments in Sri Lanka,” Peter Breuer, IMF Senior Mission Chief for Sri Lanka, and Masahiro Nozaki, IMF Mission Chief for Sri Lanka said in a statement on Sunday.
“We hope to resolve the current situation that will allow for the resumption of our dialogue on an IMF-supported programme, while we plan to continue technical discussions with our counterparts in the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Sri Lanka,” Economy Next reported it as stating.
- Meanwhile, the US has urged Sri Lanka leaders to work 'quickly' to address the 'discontent'. Any new government should "work quickly to identify and implement solutions that will achieve long-term economic stability and address the Sri Lankan people's discontent," a US State Department spokesperson said, as quoted by news agency AFP.
Rajapaksa, 73, became Sri Lankan President in November 2020. He appears to have gone underground in the face of massive public anger over an unprecedented economic crisis since the country became independent in 1948.
In May, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's elder brother and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa had to quit amidst massive anti-government protests.
The Rajapaksa brothers, Mahinda and Gotabaya, were hailed by many in Sri Lanka as heroes for winning the civil war against the LTTE but they are now blamed for the country's worst economic crisis.
The recent events have come as a dramatic fall from grace for a powerful family that has dominated Sri Lankan politics for more than a decade.
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Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, has been under the grip of unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades. The nation is crippled by an acute shortage of foreign exchange that has left it struggling to pay for imports of fuel, and other essentials.
The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.
Sri Lanka's total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.
(With Agency Inputs)
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