Sri Lanka declares `State of Emergency’ after President flees to Maldives

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared a state of emergency as the acting president after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives on Wednesday, leading to more protests amid an economic crisis.

“The prime minister as acting president has declared a state of emergency (countrywide) and imposed a curfew in the western province,” Wickremesinghe’s media secretary, Dinouk Colombage, told Reuters.

The Prime Minister has ordered the security forces to arrest those acting in a riotous manner, his office said.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo Wednesday morning, demanding Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s immediate resignation as news emerged that he has fled the country.

Media reports in the Maldives said the Sri Lankan president had arrived in the country early on Wednesday although Reuters was unable to independently verify this.

A Maldives government spokesman did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Security forces were seen using teargas shells to disperse the crowd as protesters tried to make their way towards the Prime Minister’s office on Flower Road – about a 20 minutes walk away from the main protest site of Galle Face Green.

Earlier today, media reports claimed that Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country hours before he was due to step down amid widespread protests over his handling of a devastating economic crisis.

Back in Galle Face Green – the city’s main protest site – some are furious about Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s departure.

“We don’t like it. We want to keep him. We want our money back! And we want to put all the Rajapaksas in an open prison where they can do farmwork,” said protester GP Nimal who has spent the last 43 days at Galle Face Green.

“There is no justice,” he told BBC.

Meanwhile, India rejected the “baseless and speculative” reports of New Delhi facilitating Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s travel to the Maldives on late Tuesday.

The Indian High Commission in Colombo said that India will continue to support the people of Sri Lanka “as they seek to realize their aspirations for prosperity and progress through democratic means and values, established democratic institutions and constitutional framework”.

According to a Reuters report, the key members of Sri Lanka’s ruling party are keen to back Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as their presidential nominee though no decision has been taken yet.

A top ruling party source said on condition of anonymity that the members met on Tuesday evening and their “overwhelming consensus” was for Wickremesinghe to replace President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled to the Maldives after protesters stormed his residence on Saturday.

Protesters have also demanded the ouster of Wickremesinghe, who himself has offered to resign as prime minister to make way for a unity government.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had said he would step down once an all-party interim government is set up following Mr Rajapaksa’s departure.

Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, the speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament, told Reuters partner ANI he was yet to receive any communication from Rajapaksa. A source in the ruling party said the president would send in a letter of resignation later on Wednesday.

That would make Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe the acting president, although he has also offered to resign. If he does, the speaker will be the acting president until a new president is elected, as per the constitution.

A statement from protests leaders, however, has warned of a “decisive fight” if Wickremesinghe does not resign by Wednesday afternoon.

“If we don’t hear of the resignation of the president and the prime minister by the evening, we may have to gather back and take over parliament or another government building,” said Buddhi Prabodha Karunaratne, one of the organisers of recent protests.

“We are strongly against the Gota-Ranil government. Both have to go.”

The island nation’s tourism-dependent economy was hammered first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then suffered from a fall in remittances from overseas Sri Lankans. A ban on chemical fertilisers hit output although the ban was later reversed.

The Rajapaksas implemented populist tax cuts in 2019 that affected government finances while shrinking foreign reserves curtailed imports of fuel, food and medicines.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s elder brother, resigned as prime minister in May after protests against the family turned violent. He remained in hiding at a military base in the east of the country for some days before returning to Colombo.

In May, the Rajapaksa government-appointed Mohammed Nasheed, the speaker of the Maldives parliament and a former president, to help coordinate foreign assistance for crisis-hit Sri Lanka.

The same month, Nasheed publicly denied allegations that he was helping Mahinda Rajapaksa secure safe haven in the Maldives.

On Tuesday, Sri Lankan immigration officials prevented Basil Rajapaksa from flying out of the country.

It was not clear where Basil Rajapaksa, who also holds US citizenship, was trying to go. He resigned as finance minister in early April amid heavy street protests and quit his seat in parliament in June.