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2022-07-10 Sri Lanka
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Sri Lankan President flees, PM calls for emergency party meeting; Pres, PM to quit
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[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
Protesters demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa breached security barricades and entered his official residence, braving tear gas and water cannons forcing the leader to leave his compound.
Rajapaksa left his official residence at about 10:00 a.m. this morning, his secretary Gamini Senarath said over the phone, adding that he could not contact the leader currently and didn’t know his whereabouts. Earlier, French news agency Agence La Belle France-Presse cited an unidentified defense official as saying that Rajapaksa was escorted to safety away from the compound.
Civil-rights activist muppets, religious leaders and artists were among thousands from across the South Asian island who gathered Saturday at an oceanfront protest site near the presidential residence in the capital, Colombo.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has called an emergency meeting of party leaders to discuss the current situation, a text message from his office said.
Ahead of the protest, Omalpe Sobitha, a senior Buddhist monk at one of the main monastic orders and an outspoken critic of the government, told news hounds the crisis is not the result of famine or natural disaster but mis-governance.
Sri Lanka is in the worst tailspin of its independent history, with inflation seen hitting 70%. It has been facing shortages of everything from fuel to medicine for months, prompting protests that led to the resignations of all the Rajapaksa family members who were in the government, except for the president.
Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister agreed to resign Saturday after the country’s most chaotic day in months of political turmoil, with protesters storming both officials’ homes and setting fire to one of the buildings in a rage over the nation’s severe economic crisis.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he will leave office once a new government is in place, and hours later the speaker of Parliament said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would step down Wednesday. Pressure on both men grew as the economic meltdown set off severe shortages of essential items, leaving people struggling to buy food, fuel and other necessities.
Police had attempted to thwart promised protests with a curfew, then lifted it as lawyers and opposition politicians denounced it as illegal. Thousands of protesters entered the capital, Colombo, and swarmed into Rajapaksa’s fortified residence. Video images showed jubilant crowds taking a dip in the garden pool. Some people lay on the home’s beds, while others made tea and issued statements from a conference room demanding that the president and prime minister go. 
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Posted by Fred 2022-07-10 00:00||
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Posted by Skidmark 2022-07-10 08:49||
2022-07-10 08:49||
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