Sri Lanka’s president left the country early Wednesday, leaving just hours before vowing to step down under pressure from protesters angry over a devastating economic crisis. But the crowds quickly took out their fury on the prime minister, storming his office and demanding he go too. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife departed on a Sri Lanka Air Force aircraft bound for the Maldives, the Air Force said in a statement. That has brought little relief to the island nation, which has been wracked for months by an economic disaster that has caused severe food and fuel shortages – and is now engulfed in political chaos. Thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe gathered outside his office and some climbed walls as the crowd roared their support and threw water bottles at those who invaded. Some were later seen inside the building and standing on a roof terrace waving the Sri Lankan flag. In a move likely to anger the protesters further, Rajapaksa appointed his prime minister as acting president since he was out of the country, according to the parliament speaker. Rajapaksa has yet to resign, but President Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said the president assured him he would later in the day. “We need both … to go home,” Supun Eranga, a 28-year-old civil servant told the crowd outside Wickremesinghe’s office. “Ranil could not deliver what he promised during his two months, so he should step down. All Ranil did was try to protect the Rajapaksas.” But Wickremesinghe has said he will leave only when a new government is formed. Police initially used tear gas to try to disperse the protesters outside his office, but failed and more and more descended on the lane towards the compound. As helicopters flew overhead, some protesters held up their middle fingers. Some protesters who appeared to be unconscious were taken to a hospital. Amidst the chaos, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency across the country and state television briefly stopped broadcasting. Protesters have already occupied the president’s home and office and the prime minister’s official residence after months of protests that have uprooted the political dynasty of the Rajapaksa family, 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 the capital Colombo on public transport. Protesters have vowed to occupy official buildings until top leaders leave. 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 Wickremesinghe’s private house. 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 had “destroyed this country and stolen 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?’ Sedaraliyanage said. “This is the first time that people in Sri Lanka have risen up like this against a president. We want some responsibility.” 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 corruption charges, but Rajapaksa has acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to the collapse, which has left the island nation saddled with debt and unable to pay for essential goods imports. The shortages have sown despair among Sri Lanka’s 22 million people and were all the more shocking because before the recent crisis, the economy was expanding and a comfortable middle class was growing. The political deadlock has added fuel to the economic disaster, as the absence of an alternative unity government has threatened to delay an expected bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country relies on aid from neighboring India and China. As protests escalated on Wednesday outside the prime minister’s building, his office imposed a state of emergency that gives wider powers to the military and police and declared an immediate curfew in the western province that includes Colombo. The Air Force said in a statement that it provided an aircraft, with the approval of the Defense Department, for the president and his wife to travel to the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean known for exclusive tourist resorts. He said all immigration and customs laws were followed. The whereabouts of other family members who had served in government, including several who resigned from their posts in recent months, was uncertain. 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. Assuming Rajapaksa steps down as planned, Sri Lankan lawmakers agreed to elect a new president on July 20, 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. “Gotabaya’s resignation is one problem solved — but there are so many more,” said Basura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old marine electrical engineering student who is not related to the prime minister. 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.
Associated Press writer Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed to this report.
