The Sri Lankan parliament approved Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation as president

The Sri Lankan parliament confirmed this Friday the Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation from the presidency of the country, after authenticating the letter sent by post from the then president of Singapore.

“In this sense, the president resigned and legally left his position July 14, 2022 ”, the President of Parliament, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene, announced to the press this Friday, explaining that the new head of state will be elected within the next seven days.

“My goal is to complete the process as quickly and successfully as possible,” he stressed, adding that it is vital to ensure that a new president in a transparent and democratic framework. Until then, Ranil Wickremesinghe he will continue to be interim president.

The resignation of the president is the result of art intense protests that the island nation has been going through since the end of March, when thousands of protesters began taking to the streets of Colombo to protest the economic crisis.

peaceful in principle the protests turned violent last Saturday when several groups of people attacked the residences of Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe, in the capital, forcing them to flee.

Rajapaksa announced that day that he would take his resignation into effect on Wednesday, but fled on a plane to the Maldives before doing so. From there, he traveled with his wife and two bodyguards on an armed forces plane to Singapore, from where he sent the letter of resignation.

Prior to his departure from Sri Lanka, Rajapaksa appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as interim president, although the nation expected that both leaders would resign as promised later that day.

In this way Rajapaksa, elected in 2019, has thus become the first president of Sri Lanka to step down since Sri Lanka adopted the presidential system of government in 1978.

The streets of Colombo adopted a festive atmosphere from the early hours of the morning, knowing the imminent announcement with the resignation of the president that was about to take place in the early morning.

The images broadcast by local media and on social networks showed large groups of people throwing firecrackers, dancing to the rhythm of music or shouting slogans, many of them in front of the gates of Parliament or in the Galle Face park, near the Presidential Secretariat, the epicenter. of the protests since its inception in March.

A president repudiated even abroad

Although he is already far from his country, Gotabaya Rajapaksa cannot escape rejection. Local media in the Maldives reported that the president was received hostile by passengers at the airport when Wednesday came.

He was booed and insulted at Velana International Airport and a group organized a demonstration to ask the Maldivian authorities to did not allow their presence.

Rajapaksa did not give up on luxury even in exile. Maldivian media reported that he spent the night at the Waldorf Astoria Ithaafushi, a ultra-luxury hotel in this exclusive tourist destination. She then traveled to Singapore.

This opulence contrasts with the severe crisis that his compatriots are experiencing at a time when four out of five people in the country have to skip a meal due to the catastrophic economic situation.

With information from EFE.