Sri Lanka’s government has confirmed the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is to resign, paving the way for the appointment of a successor, amid reports that the beleaguered leader had attempted to flee the country on Monday.
A statement from the office of the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said “Rajapaksa has officially informed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he will be resigning”, in the most formal confirmation yet that the president intends to step down later this week.
Sri Lanka’s parliament will reconvene on 15 July and a new president will be elected by MPs on 20 July, according to the speaker of parliament.
The country’s main opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, told the BBC he intends to run for the post, after his Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party, who are the largest opposition party, held talks with allies to get support for the move.
Even as the resignation announcement was made, the whereabouts of the president remained unknown. He has not been publicly seen since he was escorted out of his presidential palace on Saturday morning and kept under the protection of the navy in an undisclosed location.
Reports and statements by officials circulated on Monday that the president had been flown to an airbase near the international airport, with the intention of leaving the country. It is unclear if he will remain in Sri Lanka till Wednesday, the date of his expected resignation.
His younger brother Basil Rajapaksa, who was the former finance minister and stands accused of corruption and economic mismanagement, made an attempt to flee the country on a flight to Dubai on Monday night. However, there were mass protests from other passengers, and airport staff refused to let him board the flight, forcing him to turn back. Basil Rajapaksa has dual US citizenship and it was thought he was trying to fly to the US.
Rajapaksa has been facing pressure to resign for months as the country struggles through its worst economic crisis on record. He had repeatedly refused but his hand was forced after protesters on Saturday took over the presidential palace and offices and the official residence of the prime minister. Rajapaksa had signalled over the weekend his intention to resign on 13 July but has still not personally addressed the public or submitted a resignation letter.
Rajapaksa has been president since November 2019 and, alongside five other members of his family who held senior political posts, stands accused of corruption, economic mismanagement and bankrupting the country. Sri Lanka’s reserves of foreign currency have run dry and the country is facing a humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, as it has been unable to import food, fuel and medicines. Many struggle to have one meal a day, and people are forced to wait in queues lasting up to five days waiting for petrol.
Wickremesinghe has also agreed to resign once an all-party government was formed. The five-time PM, who has only been in office since May, had faced criticism that he had helped prop up the Rajapaksa presidency in a government that lacked public legitimacy and was doomed to collapse, wasting critical months in achieving political stability for the country.
Wickremesinghe’s private home was set alight on Saturday night after a violent standoff between police and police, during which demonstrators and journalists were beaten outside the house. On Monday, he made an emotional statement about the incident, during which his collection of historical paintings, Buddhist artefacts and library of about 2,500 rare books, some dating back 200 years, was reduced to ash.
“Only Hitler-led mobs could do this,” he said.
The cabinet also announced they would all resign to make way for a unity government made up of MPs from a broad sweep of political parties. Opposition leaders had lengthy meetings on Sunday and Monday as they scrambled to form a framework for an all-party government to take over the running of the country once the president steps down.
While constitutionally there will have to be a replacement president when Rajapaksa resigns, many are calling for it to be a largely symbolic appointment who would only remain in place until the system of executive presidency had been abolished entirely.
The caretaker government is expected to last only six to eight months, until Sri Lanka’s circumstances improve and a parliamentary election is economically viable.
Ahilan Kadirgamar, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Jaffna, said that the president’s resignation had been “building up over the last six months when it became clear he had lost the legitimacy of the people”.
But he was among those expressed concern that even with both Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe’s promising to step down “there might be some kind of last minute manoeuvre to try to keep one of them in power, given that they’re both big political schemers.”
“It would be very unfortunate if they tried to do that,” said Kadirgamar. “They might be able to prolong their stay for a week or a month, but the mood in the country is such that they will be chased away. Without legitimate leaders, we can’t move out of this crisis.”
Protesters shared similar concerns and have continued to occupy the president and prime minister’s official properties, claiming them as public property and stating that they will not leave until both leaders have stepped down. On Monday, long queues formed outside the presidential palace as thousands of people clamoured to get a view of his once heavily fortified opulent residence, now open to all, and take a dip in his outdoor pool.
Kadirgamar warned that the interim government faced a dual challenge of deep public mistrust in parliament and an economic crisis that continues to worsen, with worries that a famine-like situation could be on the horizon.
“Politically, this a moment of optimism, but when I look at the severity of the crisis, I’m deeply concerned about the impact on people if we can’t quickly reach a consensus on crucial economic issues,” he said.
