Sri Lanka Crisis: President Gotabaya to resign on July 13, PM Wickremasinghe’s house set on fire

Sri Lanka’s embattled 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, blaming his government for an unprecedented economic crisis that has brought the country to its knees.

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.

Here are the top updates on the big story:

Thousands of protesters stormed the official residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who appears to have gone underground in the face of massive public anger. In remarkable scenes, hinting at a society in a meltdown, anti-government protesters were seen occupying a bedroom, sitting on a four poster bed, helping themselves to food in the kitchen and splashing in a swimming pool in Gotabaya’s residence.

The anti-government protesters also did not spare Wickremasinghe. A group of protesters entered his private residence and set it on fire.

With no other political solution in sight, Wickremasinghe, who was appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in May to fix the island nation’s bankrupt economy, offered to step down. Wickremesinghe was appointed by the president after his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was forced to resign in May, amidst massive anti-government protests.

Opposition leader Raul Hakeem told reporters that party leaders wanted both President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to resign and Speaker Abeywardena to become acting president as per the Constitution. The Constitution stipulates under article 40C that the Prime Minister must act as the President until Parliament could appoint an acting president within one month of president vacating office.

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, crippled by an acute shortage of foreign exchange that has left it struggling to pay for essential imports of fuel, and other essentials. Protesters blame President Rajapaksa’s government for the country’s economic malaise, the worst since independence in 1948.

Last week, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe announced in Parliament that Sri Lanka would present a debt restructuring programme to the IMF by August to secure a bailout package while underlining that the negotiations with the global lender were more complex and difficult than in the past because the country was “bankrupt”.