- Friday, May 03, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
EMBATTLED Sri Lanka president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the crisis-ravaged island-nation with his wife and security on Wednesday (13) to the Maldives, was heading to Singapore after spending a day in Male, the Maldivian capital, the Press Trust of India reported.
Sources also said that Rajapaksa departed from the Maldives on a Saudi Arabian flight and he will eventually go to Riyadh, a government official of the Maldives told Associated Press. Sri Lankans in the Maldives also protested against Rajapaksa’s presence in that country and a controversy erupted over Male allowing him a shelter.
Rajapaksa fled Sri Lanka on the day he was supposed to resign from his post. His decision to quit came after protesters stormed his official residence in Colombo last Saturday (9) after the country came to a grinding halt because of an unprecedented economic crisis.
While prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe was appointed as Sri Lanka’s acting president, giving rise to constitutional disputes, all eyes were still set on Rajapaksa who was expected to send his resignation letter to the speaker of the Sri Lankan parliament by July 13 night which he failed.
The beleagured government imposed a curfew in the Colombo district from 12 noon on Thursday (14) to 5 am on Friday (15) after protesters stormed the prime minister’s office on Wednesday and called for his resignation.
The Lankan parliament is likely to name a new full-fledged president next week and a top source in the ruling party told Reuters that Wickremasinghe, a seasoned politician, was the first choice.
