The 73-year-old leader was forced to step down on Saturday by a street riot in which tens of thousands of protesters angered by rising fuel and food prices and shortages gathered in Colombo, the commercial capital, and stormed the presidential palace. “At the request of the government and under the conditions available to the president under the constitution, with the full approval of the Ministry of Defence, the president, his wife and two security officials were given a Sri Lanka Air Force plane to depart from the international Katunayake Airport for the Maldives in the early hours of July 13,” the Air Force said on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday night, Rajapaksa and his younger brother Basil Rajapaksa, a former finance minister, were stopped by immigration officials from boarding commercial flights. “I can confirm to you that he left last night,” a senior immigration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Financial Times. “All immigration formalities completed.” The official said Rajapaksa’s brother remained in the country. He added: “We have no power to stop the president from leaving, as the media has claimed.” In a speech shortly after 1 p.m., Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament, said Rajapaksa had named Ranil Wickremesinghe, the prime minister, as deputy president in his place. Police fire tear gas as protesters storm Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office in Colombo on Wednesday © Rafiq Maqbool/AP Under the Sri Lankan constitution, the prime minister is next in line to succeed the president if he resigns. However, as of early Wednesday afternoon, Rajapaksa had not formally resigned. “As the president is out of the country, in accordance with Article 37(1), he has informed me that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been appointed acting president,” Abeywardena said. Wickremesinghe is himself the target of protesters’ ire and has previously said he would step down once a new unity government is formed. The fall of Rajapaksa marks the end of one of Asia’s most powerful political dynasties, which many Sri Lankans credit with winning a long and brutal war against Tamil separatists in the country’s north. But he is now accused of heavy borrowing to build Chinese-backed Belt and Road spending projects and a series of failed economic policies that caused Sri Lanka to default on its debt in May.

News that Rajapaksa had left was greeted with jubilation by protesters who occupied the palace, who had plastered its walls with graffiti, including the slogan “Gota, go home”. “I am happy that he is gone, both as a citizen of this country and as an activist,” said Nirmani Liyanage of the Citizens Forum, a political group belonging to the Aragalaya (Struggle) movement that has been calling for Rajapaksa’s resignation ever since. April. He said it was an important development for Aragalaya in their pursuit of “accountability, transparency and participatory democracy” in Sri Lanka. Wickremesinghe on Wednesday morning declared a national state of emergency and a curfew in Western Province, the most populous subdivision that includes Colombo. Meanwhile, protesters gathered around his office and called for him to resign with chants of “Go home Ranil” and “Go home Gota” (Rajapaksa). Wickremesinghe has promised to step down once a new government is formed. The president’s flight from Sri Lanka leaves a power vacuum at a time when the country needs to form a new government and secure an IMF financing facility. The deal will unlock funding for emergency loans that will allow it to import essential goods and make progress in debt restructuring talks. After Rajapaksa promised to step down, opposition parties began talks to form a new government, a step needed to secure an IMF program. Sri Lanka’s debt stands at $51 billion, just over half of which is owed to bilateral and multilateral lenders led by China. According to the UN World Food Programme, more than 6 million people out of a population of 22 million are “food insecure”, meaning they do not consume enough calories to lead a healthy and productive life.