Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announces his resignation after the wave of protests that yesterday devastated the capital Colombo. He will leave the presidency on 13 July.

"To ensure a peaceful transition, the head of state said he will step down on July 13, " Sri Lankan Parliament Speaker Mahinda Abeywardana said in a televised statement.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who walked away from his official residence escorted by the military to escape an angry crowd of protesters who stormed the presidential palace, has agreed to step down next week. Shortly before, the head of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was also forced to resign, had fallen.

Sri Lanka was once a middle-income country, with a GDP per capita comparable to that of the Philippines and a standard of living that neighboring India envied. It is now experiencing an unprecedented crisis, initially caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which deprived the island of 22 million inhabitants of tourism revenues, and aggravated, according to experts, by a series of bad political decisions.

A crisis that has led to a sharp spike in prices and a serious shortage of food, drugs and fuel , so much so that the authorities have suspended the sale of gasoline and diesel for non-essential vehicles in an attempt to preserve stocks.

Yesterday the police had imposed a curfew, which was then lifted after the measure was largely ignored by the demonstrators , some of whom forced the stopped trains to restart to allow them to reach the capital Colombo to demonstrate.

The country is almost out of petrol and had to close schools but the demonstrators, supported by the main opposition parties, have also rented private buses to reach the capital.

(Unioneonline / L)