Turmoil in Sri Lanka as thousands protest

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Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa delivers a speech at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1, 2021.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he will resign next week, according to Sri Lanka’s speaker of Parliament, as protests broke out on Saturday and demonstrators breached the official residences of the president and prime minister. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also said he is willing to resign.

Here’s what we know right now:

Resignations: Sri Lanka’s Speaker of Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said Rajapaksa informed him that he will resign on July 13, the speaker’s office announced Saturday. The announcement came after a request by the speaker asking for the president to resign following a meeting of party leaders. 

Hours earlier, Wickremesinghe reiterated his willingness to step down. He tweeted Saturday that he accepted the recommendation of party leaders to resign. 

Wickremesinghe has not yet submitted his letter of resignation to the president.

Under the Sri Lankan constitution, if both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa resign, the speaker of parliament will serve as acting president for a maximum of 30 days. Meanwhile, parliament will elect a new president within 30 days from one of its members, who will hold the office for the remaining two years of the current term. 

Demonstrators break into residences: About 100,000 protesters amassed outside of the president’s official residence on Saturday, demanding Rajapaksa’s resignation. Video broadcast on Sri Lankan television and on social media showed protesters enter the President’s House — Rajapaksa’s office and residence in the commercial capital of Colombo — after breaking through security cordons placed by police. Images showed demonstrators inside the building hanging banners from the balcony, as well as swimming in the residence’s pool.

Local media reported that protesters breached the prime minister’s official residence, known as Temple Trees, and also set his private home on fire, according to his office. 

Over 50 injured: The number of people injured in Sri Lanka’s protests has risen to 55, according to Dr. Pushpa Zoysa with the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, including three people who suffered gunshot wounds.

Why is this happening?: The South Asian nation is suffering its worst financial crisis in recent history, leaving millions struggling to buy food, medicine and fuel.

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in recent months, calling for the country’s leaders to resign over accusations of economic mismanagement.

Schools have been suspended and fuel has been limited to essential services. Patients are unable to travel to hospitals due to the fuel shortage and food prices are soaring. Trains have reduced in frequency, forcing travelers to squeeze into compartments and even sit precariously on top of them as they commute to work.

In several major cities, including Colombo, hundreds are forced to stand in line for hours to buy fuel, sometimes clashing with police and the military as they wait.

Sri Lanka’s Speaker of Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has informed him that he will resign on July 13, the speaker’s office announced Saturday.

The announcement came after a request by the speaker asking for the president to resign following a meeting of party leaders. 

Earlier, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he is willing to resign and make way for an all-party government to take over.

Soldiers and Police Special Task Force personnel jump across steel barriers as protesters attempt to push them down near the road that leads to the presidential residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on July 9.

A Sri Lankan television station said six of its journalists were attacked late Saturday by the Sri Lanka Police Special Task Force outside the Sri Lankan prime minister’s private residence amid protests calling for the president to resign. 

Two of the journalists from the Sri Lankan TV channel Newsfirst had their cameras rolling at the time. Video aired by Newsfirst showed two journalists being pushed to the ground by police during the confrontation. Fellow journalists who rushed to their aid were then also attacked, Newsfirst reported.

Inspector General of Sri Lanka Police C. D. Wickremaratne said the officers associated with the attacks have been “suspended immediately” in a statement aired on national television. 

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also issued a statement condemning the attacks, saying that “freedom of media is paramount to democracy in Sri Lanka.”

The prime minister requested both security forces and protesters “act with restraint to prevent any violence and ensure the safety of the public.”

Wickremesinghe earlier on Saturday said he was willing to resign and make way for an all-party government to take over. The prime minister’s office also said protesters had broken into his private residence and set it on fire.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at the private residence of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Saturday.

Protesters have broken into the private residence of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and set it on fire, according to the prime minister’s office. 

Wickremesinghe was not in the residence at the time it was breached. He had been moved earlier to a safer location, his office said. 

Live video streamed by local media and seen by CNN showed the residence engulfed in flames as crowds gathered at the scene. 

The private residence on Fifth Lane in the commercial capital of Colombo is where the prime minister and his family reside. It is separate from the official residence, called Temple Trees. 

Wickremesinghe earlier said he was willing to resign and make way for an all-party government to take over.

In June, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe — who now says he is willing to resign as protesters breached both his and the president’s residences over the country’s economic crisis — said Sri Lanka’s economy “completely collapsed.” 

Sri Lanka is in the midst of its worst financial crisis in seven decades, after its foreign exchange reserves plummeted to record lows, with dollars running out to pay for essential imports including food, medicine and fuel.

The government recently took drastic measures to cope with the crisis, including implementing a four-day work week for public sector workers to allow them time to grow their own crops. However, the measures are doing little to ease the struggles faced by many in the country.

In several major cities, including the commercial capital, Colombo, hundreds continue to line up for hours to buy fuel, sometimes clashing with police and the military as they wait. Trains have reduced in frequency, forcing travelers to squeeze into compartments and even sit precariously on top of them as they commute to work.

Patients are unable to travel to hospitals due to the fuel shortage and food prices are soaring. Rice, a staple in the South Asian nation, has disappeared from shelves in many shops and supermarkets.

Wickremesinghe, who took office days after violent protests forced his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign, appeared to place the blame for the country’s situation on the previous government in comments in June.

Sri Lanka has mainly been relying on neighboring India to remain afloat – it has received $4 billion in credit lines – but Wickremesinghe said that too might not be enough.

The next step, he said, was to strike a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“This is our only option. We must take this path. Our aim is to hold discussions with the IMF and arrive at an agreement to obtain an additional credit facility,” Wickremesinghe said.

Some context: For the past decade, according to Murtaza Jafferjee, chair of Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, the Sri Lankan government had borrowed vast sums of money from foreign lenders and expanded public services. As the government’s borrowings grew, the economy took hits from major monsoons that hurt agricultural output in 2016 and 2017, followed by a constitutional crisis in 2018, and the deadly Easter bombings in 2019.

In 2019, the newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa slashed taxes in an attempt to stimulate the economy.

“They misdiagnosed the problem and felt that they had to give a fiscal stimulus through tax cuts,” Jafferjee said.

In 2020, the pandemic hit, bringing Sri Lanka’s tourist-dependent economy shuddering to a halt as the country shut its borders and imposed lockdowns and curfews. The government was left with a large deficit.

Shanta Devarajan, an international development professor at Georgetown University and former World Bank chief economist, says the tax cuts and economic malaise hit government revenue, prompting rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka’s credit rating to near default levels – meaning the country lost access to overseas markets.

Sri Lanka fell back on its foreign exchange reserves to pay off government debt, shrinking its reserves from $6.9 billion in 2018 to $2.2 billion this year, according to an IMF briefing.

The cash crunch impacted imports of fuel and other essentials and, in February, Sri Lanka imposed rolling power cuts to deal with the fuel crisis that had sent prices soaring, even before the global crunch that ensued as Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

In May, the government floated the Sri Lankan rupee, effectively devaluing it by causing the currency to plunge against the US dollar.

Jafferjee described the government’s moves as a “series of blunder after blunder.”

Read more here:

Protesters run to take cover as police uses tear gas shells to disperse them during a protest outside Sri Lankan president's private residence on the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, March 31, 2022. Sri Lanka police fired tear gas and a water canon to disperse several hundred people protesting near the private residence of the country's president. The people had gathered Thursday to protest the economic hardships faced by them. Protestors shouted slogans condemning the long power cuts and shortages of essentials. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Related article Sri Lanka is in an economic crisis. Here's what it's like for people on the ground | CNN

CNN’s Rukshana Rizwie and Julia Hollingsworth contributed reporting to this post.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe tweeted Saturday that he accepts the recommendation of party leaders to resign. 

“To ensure the continuation of the Government including the safety of all citizens I accept the best recommendation of the Party Leaders today, to make way for an All-Party Government,” Wickremesinghe tweeted. 

“To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister,” he said. 

Wickremesinghe has not yet submitted his letter of resignation to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

Some context: If both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa resign, under the Sri Lankan constitution, the speaker of parliament will serve as acting president for a maximum of 30 days. Meanwhile, parliament will elect a new president within 30 days from one of its members who will hold the office for the remaining two years of the current term. 

Protesters participate in an anti-government demonstration outside the Galle International Cricket Stadium in Galle on July 9, 2022. (Photo by ISHARA S. KODIKARA / AFP) (Photo by ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images)

Thousands of anti-government demonstrators protested outside a stadium in Sri Lanka’s southern coastal city of Galle during the country’s Test cricket match against Australia, the world’s No. 1 ranked team, on Saturday.  

Local media showed videos of large crowds protesting against the government outside the Galle International Stadium, which is about a two-hour drive from Colombo. They waved Sri Lankan flags and carried banners with signs reading “Power to the people” and “GotaGoHome” — demanding President Gotabaya Rajapaksa step down over his handling of the country’s dire economic crisis.

Many protesters then defied a police ban to march to the top of a fort overlooking the stadium grounds, where they continued to hold banners and chant their demands.  

The protests didn’t stop the play, however.  

Australian cricket commentator Adam Collins, reporting from the stadium, described “extraordinary scenes in Galle.” 

Amid economic turmoil and widespread protests in the island nation, the Australian cricket team arrived in Sri Lanka in the first week of June to play two Tests, five One Day Internationals (ODIs) and three Twenty20 International (T20Is) matches against the Lions. 

“We’ve been following closely, it’s something we’ve spoken about in our team meetings as well,” Australian captain Pat Cummins told reporters last week.  

“We’re so lucky to come here and experience Sri Lanka pretty normally. We’re certainly seeing the effects, even in the buses seeing the queues kilometres long around petrol stations, so that’s really hit home for us. No matter what the result is, we’re in a really privileged position. There’s a lot of people making this happen for us to play a bit of cricket,” he added.  

On Friday, Cummins tweeted, “Sri Lanka is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in decades,” and shared a video where he sat down with two Sri Lankan locals to talk about their experience and what’s happening on the ground. He also shared a UNICEF link and asked people to support Sri Lankan children impacted by the economic crisis. 

Protesters carry an injured man in Colombo on July 9.

The number of people injured in Sri Lanka’s protests has risen to 55, according to Dr. Pushpa Zoysa with the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, including three people who received gunshot wounds, she said.

Among those injured is a lawmaker from eastern Sri Lanka, she added.

Some background: Anger reached unprecedented levels in the South Asian nation of 22 million on Saturday, as more than 100,000 people amassed outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence, calling for his resignation.

Video broadcast on Sri Lankan television and on social media showed the protesters enter President’s House — Rajapaksa’s office and residence in the commercial capital — after breaking through security cordons placed by police. Images show demonstrators inside the building and hanging banners from the balcony, as well as swimming in the residence’s pool.

Rajapaksa is not at the site and has been moved elsewhere, security officials told CNN. It is unclear how many security personnel are present at the location.

Protesters then also breached Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s official residence, known as Temple Trees, according to local media reports, while video of protesters entering the gates to Wickremesinghe’s residence circulated on social media on Saturday.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during an interview in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on June 11.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said he is willing to resign and make way for an all-party government to take over, the prime minister’s office said Saturday. 

The statement comes after a meeting of party leaders, held by Sri Lanka’s parliament speaker, agreed to ask both the president and prime minister to resign per an “overwhelming request,” Sri Lankan MP Rauff Hakeem tweeted on Saturday. 

The decision also comes as fuel distribution is due to recommence this week, when the World Food Programme Director is also set to visit the country, and ahead of a debt sustainability report for the International Monetary Fund, the prime minister’s office added.