President Flees Sri Lanka Amid Crisis And Ire Turns To PM
Newsy
Over the weekend, protesters seized the president's home and office and the official residence of the prime minister following months of protests.
Sri Lanka's president fled the country early Wednesday, slipping away only hours before he promised to resign under pressure from protesters enraged by a devastating economic crisis. But the crowds quickly trained their ire on the prime minister, storming his office and demanding he also go.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife left aboard an air force plane bound for the Maldives — and he made his prime minister the acting president in his absence. That appeared to only further roil passions in the island nation, which has been gripped for months by an economic disaster that has triggered severe shortages of food and fuel — and now is beset by political chaos.
Thousands of protesters — who had anticipated that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe would be appointed acting president — rallied outside his office compound and some scaled the walls, as the crowd roared its support and tossed water bottles to those charging in.
