After a months-long massive public agitation, Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Saturday informed the Speaker that he would resign from the Presidency on July 13.
The island nation is still in the dark about the embattled President’s whereabouts. Rajapaksa’s only communication has been with the Parliament since the protesters stormed into the city.
As per reports, he has been communicating with Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, who announced late Saturday night that the President would resign on Wednesday.
Bowing to severe pressure after a day of violent protests in Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will step down next Wednesday, the country’s parliamentary speaker said on Saturday.
The demonstrators had stormed the president’s official residence and set fire to the prime minister’s home in Colombo.
Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene, in a video message, announced that President Rajapaksa had informed him about his decision to resign.
President Rajapaksa, who had not appeared publicly since Friday night, had announced he would agree to any decision taken by the party leaders.
The announcement came after a dramatic escalation in months of largely peaceful anti-government protests over a dire economic crisis on the Indian Ocean island of 22 million people.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s opposition political parties will meet today to agree on a new government a day after the country’s president and prime minister offer to resign.
Protesters who stormed the president’s official residence, his office and the prime minister’s official residence on Saturday spent the night there, saying they will stay until the leaders officially resign.
Later, the news of the president’s decision triggered an eruption of celebratory fireworks in parts of Colombo.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also said he is willing to resign to make way for an all-party government, his office said in a statement on Saturday evening.
It was not yet clear if this would quell popular anger.
Throughout the day soldiers and police were unable to hold back a crowd of chanting protesters demanding Rajapaksa’s resignation and blaming him for the country’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.
Neither Rajapaksa nor Wickremesinghe were in their residences when the buildings were attacked.
Inside the president’s house during Saturday’s protests, a Facebook livestream showed hundreds of protesters, some draped in the national flag, packing into rooms and corridors.
Video footage showed some of them splashing in the swimming pool, while others sat on a four-poster bed and sofas. Some could be seen emptying out a chest of drawers in images that were widely circulated on social media.
Rajapaksa had left the official residence on Friday as a safety precaution ahead of the planned weekend demonstration, two defence ministry sources said.
At least 39 people, including two police officers, were injured and hospitalised during the protests, hospital sources told Reuters.