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Sri Lanka PM Offers Resignation After Protesters Storm President's House

  • Posted Jul 9, 2022 22:11 by Darsh
  • 2411
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COLOMBO: Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is willing to resign to make way for all-party government, his office said in a statement on Saturday, 9 July.

Thousands of Sri Lankan protesters gathered in the country’s commercial capital Colombo on Saturday as public anger grew over the country’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.

Some held Sri Lankan flags and banners and called for Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his government to resign.

“They must go. It is time for us to think of the country,” said bus owner and retired army commando, Sisira Kumara at the permanent protest site near the seafront in the city.

Driver Priyantha Guneratne, 45, said the government must go.

“You can't govern this country properly. We have children. We are on the streets leaving our jobs because we believe in the cause. We love the country. We love our children. We are suffering," he said.

Ambulances drove through the crowds. At least 39 people, including two police officers, were injured and hospitalised during the protests, hospital sources told Reuters.

Earlier on Saturday, protesters had stormed the president’s official residence and forced their way through heavy metal gates into the Finance Ministry and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's sea-front offices.

Live video broadcast on Facebook by local news outlet News Cutter and sent to Reuters showed protesters inside the residence packing rooms and corridors, and chanting slogans demanding Rajapaksa's resignation.

Two defense ministry sources said that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had left the official residence on Friday ahead of the planned rally over the weekend.

"Wickremesinghe has told the party leaders that he is willing to resign as Prime Minister and make way for an all-party government to take over," his office said in a statement.

The Indian Ocean island of 22 million people is struggling under a severe foreign exchange shortage that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging it into the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.


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