15 July,2022 09:40 AM IST | Colombo | Agencies
Protesters prepare to vacate the official residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Colombo on Thursday. Protest leader Devinda Kodagode said they were vacating official buildings after the Parliament speaker said he was seeking legal options since Rajapaksa left without submitting his resignation as promised. Pic/AP
Sri Lanka's main city, Colombo, was calm on Thursday as people waited for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, although a curfew was imposed and troops patrolled the streets to prevent any outbreak of violence. Rajapaksa, who fled to the Maldives on Wednesday to escape a popular uprising over his family's role in a crippling economic crisis, later emailed his resignation to the speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament. His decision on Wednesday to make his ally Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe the acting president triggered more protests, with demonstrators storming parliament and premier's office demanding he quit too.
"We want Ranil to go home," Malik Perera, a 29-year-old rickshaw driver who said he took part in the parliament protests, said on Thursday. "They have sold the country, we want a good person to take over, until then we won't stop."
Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over government buildings in Colombo, blaming the powerful Rajapaksa family and allies for runaway inflation, shortages of basic goods and corruption.
Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards fled the country on an air force plane early on Wednesday and headed to the Maldives. They went to Singapore on Thursday.
"The fight is not over," said Terance Rodrigo, a 26-year-old student who said he has been inside the president's official residence compound since it was taken over by protesters on Saturday along with the PM's official residence. "We have to make society better than this. The government is not solving people's problems."
"With the president out of the country ... holding the captured places holds no symbolic value anymore," Chameera Dedduwage, one of the protest organisers said. Organisers started handing the residences back to government.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's original resignation letter will be flown into Colombo from Singapore, a source said on Thursday. Rajapaksa earlier emailed it to the speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament, two government sources said.
Sri Lankan soldiers had been authorised to use necessary force to prevent destruction of property and life, the country's army said in a statement on Thursday.
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