President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards left on a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for Malé, the capital of the Maldives, according to an immigration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. Rajapaksa had agreed to resign under pressure. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said he will step down once a new government is formed. The president’s departure followed months of protests that culminated on Saturday with protesters storming his home and office and the official residence of his prime minister. The protests have torn apart his family’s political dynasty, which has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades. On Wednesday morning, Sri Lankans continued to enter the presidential palace. A growing line of people waited to enter the residence, many of whom had traveled from outside Colombo by public transport. “What Rajapaksa did — to leave the country — is a cowardly act,” said Bashura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old marine electrical engineering student who came with friends. “I’m not celebrating. There is no point in celebrating. We have nothing in this country right now.” He complained that Sri Lankan politics has been dominated for years by “old politicians” who all need to go. “Politics should be treated like a job – you have to have qualifications that get you hired, not because of your surname,” he said, referring to the Rajapaksa family. There was no end in sight to the crisis and protesters vowed to occupy official buildings until the top leaders left. For days, people flock to the presidential palace almost as if it were a tourist attraction – swimming in the pool, admiring the paintings and lying on the pillow-filled beds. At one point, they also burned the prime minister’s private residence. At dawn, protesters took a break from chanting as the Sri Lankan national anthem was played over loudspeakers. Few waved the flag. Malik D’ Silva, a 25-year-old protester occupying the president’s office, said Rajapaksa has “destroyed this country and robbed us of our money. He said he voted for Rajapaksa in 2019 believing his military background would keep the country safe after Islamic State-inspired bombings earlier that year killed more than 260 people. Nearby, 28-year-old Sithara Sedaraliyanage and her 49-year-old mother wore black banners around their foreheads that read “Gota Go Home,” the rallying cry of the protests. “We expected him to be behind bars – not escaping to a tropical island! What kind of justice is this?’ Sithara said. “This is the first time that people in Sri Lanka have risen up like this against a president. We want some responsibility.” The air force said in a statement that it provided an aircraft for the president and his wife to travel to the Maldives with the approval of the defense ministry. He said all immigration and customs laws were followed. “This shows what happens to a leader who uses his power to the extreme,” said lawmaker Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior official of the main opposition party in Parliament, United People’s Force. Sri Lankan lawmakers agreed to elect a new president next week, but struggled to decide on the composition of a new government to pull the bankrupt country out of economic and political collapse. The new president will serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024, and could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by parliament. The current prime minister will serve as president until a replacement is chosen – an arrangement that was sure to inflame protesters who want Wickremesinghe out immediately. Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in office and it is possible that Rajapaksa was planning his escape while he still had constitutional immunity. A corruption charge against him in his previous capacity as a defense official was dropped when he was elected president in 2019. Corruption and mismanagement have left the island nation saddled with debt and unable to pay for imports of essential goods. The shortages have sown despair among the country’s 22 million residents. Sri Lankans are skipping meals and queuing for hours to try to buy scarce fuel. Until the latest crisis deepened, Sri Lanka’s economy was expanding and a comfortable middle class was growing. Sithara said the world wants new leaders who are young, educated and capable of running the economy. “We don’t know who’s next, but hopefully they’ll do a better job of fixing the problems,” he said. “Sri Lanka was a prosperous country.” As a hotel restaurant manager in Colombo, she once had a steady income. But with no tourists coming in, the hotel closed, he said. Her mother, Manjula Sedaraliyanage, used to work in Kuwait but returned to Sri Lanka a few years ago after suffering a stroke. Now the daily medication she needs has become harder to find and more expensive, Sithara said. The political deadlock added fuel to the economic crisis, as the absence of an alternative unity government threatened to delay an expected bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country relies on aid from neighboring India and China. Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from state coffers for years and the Rajapaksa administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied allegations of corruption, but Rajapaksa has acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to the collapse.
Associated Press Business Writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.
