"Will Not Contest Election Again": Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa
NDTV
Sri Lanka Crisis: Thousands of demonstrators have camped outside the Sri Lankan president's seaside office since mid-March, forcing him to retreat to his barricaded official residence about a kilometer away.
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will finish the remaining two years of his term despite months-long street protests calling for his ouster but won't stand for re-election, he told Bloomberg.
Sri Lanka is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades.
"I have been given a mandate for five years. I will not contest again," Rajapaksa said on Monday in an interview at his official residence in Colombo.
Anti-government protestors blame Rajapaksa and his family for decisions that led to severe shortages of everything from fuel to medicine, stoking inflation of 40 percent and forcing a historic debt default.