Sri Lanka Crisis: New President to be Voted on July 20
12 July, 2022 | Riya Girdhar
According to local media in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is in a "close" country and will return by Wednesday.
The dramatic events culminated months of protests by people enraged by Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic crisis and the Rajapaksa clan’s “incompetence and corruption.”
On Sunday, Sri Lankan protesters refused to leave President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence, a day after storming it and forcing him to flee with the navy and announce his resignation.
“Our struggle is far from over, “Lahiru Weerasekara, a student leader, told reporters the day after Rajapaksa, who is currently taking refuge on a vessel offshore, announced his resignation on Wednesday. “We will not give up this fight until he actually leaves.””
The dramatic events on Saturday capped months of protests by people enraged by the South Asian island nation’s unprecedented economic crisis and the Rajapaksa clan’s incompetence and corruption. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Colombo to demand that Rajapaksa accept responsibility for the shortages of medicines, food, and fuel that have brought the once-relatively prosperous economy to its knees and caused misery for ordinary people.
According to local media in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is in a “close” country and will return by Wednesday. According to sources, Rajapaksa has left the country and is in a neighbouring country; he will return by Wednesday.