LATEST: Protesters in Sri Lanka overrun PM Wickremesinghe’s office after President Rajapaksa flees the country. This comes days after demonstrators stormed the presidential palace.
“In a way, it’s good that he left,” said Tharindu Jayawardana, 29, who like thousands of others has been protesting in Colombo, the capital, for more than three months. “If he had stayed behind, he wouldn’t have been able to survive. He was selfish to save his own hide.”, who is taking Rajapaksa’s place at least temporarily, and stormed his office in protest.
Protests that had been gaining strength for months reached a dramatic climax last weekend, when demonstrators Then the air force issued a statement saying that Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards had left on a military aircraft for the Maldives. No official resignation had been tendered, raising the question: Who was in charge?Amid the confusion, Wickremesinghe was appointed acting president by Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, the speaker of Sri Lanka’s Parliament, who said he was acting on instructions from Rajapaksa.
Abeywardena, the speaker, has said Parliament will reconvene on Friday and elect a new president on July 20. There is some support for Wickremesinghe — a five-time former prime minister who was only appointed in May — to remain as president, but many protesters are adamantly opposed to the idea. The garden was once used to entertain world leaders and VIP guests by Sri Lankan officials like Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, who was prime minister before Wickremesinghe but was forced to step down by protests. The Rajapaksa family has dominated Sri Lankan politics for two decades, including 10 years when Mahinda Rajapaksa was president and Gotabaya Rajapaksa was his secretary of defense.
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