Sri Lanka PM agrees to step down after protesters storm President’s house
GBNews24 Desk//
The office of Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister in a statement on Saturday said Ranil Wickremesinghe has agreed to step down following demands by party leaders in Parliament, Khaleej Times reported.
Earlier in the day Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had summoned an urgent cabinet meeting to discuss a “swift resolution” to a potential power vacuum that was created after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence Saturday following protests.
The protesters, mostly young and male, some of them waving Sri Lankan flags, broke the police barricades on Chatham Street in Colombo’s Fort area and entered the President’s House where Rajapaksa was not present, journalists at the site said.
Police used tear gas and water cannons and also opened fire in the air in a desperate bid to scatter the mass gathering but could not prevent the protesters from entering the President’s House.
Saturday’s action came a month after mass protests forced Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to quit and take shelter in a military camp in the eastern port city of Trincomalee.
The Rajapaksa brothers — part of a large clan — are widely blamed for Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis.
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