Hours after Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe announced his resignation, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa too informed Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene that he will resign from his post on the July 13, the Daily Mirror reported. The anti-government protesters had been demanding the same as the country grappled with the worst economic crisis in its history.
Earlier in the day, Wickremesinghe announced his resignation to make way for an all-party government to take over. “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. To facilitate this I will resign as Prime Minister,” he wrote on Twitter. Soon after, a group of protesters barged into his private residence and set it ablaze, news agency AFP reported.
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo broke through police barricades and stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s official residence in one of the largest anti-government marches in the crisis-hit country this year, according to news agency Reuters. This came after reports of the President fleeing his home surfaced, according to news agency AFP. Some protesters, holding Sri Lankan flags and helmets, broke into the president’s residence, video footage from local TV news NewsFirst channel showed.
