“Will not contest election again”: Sri Lankan President

GBNews24 Desk//

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, Reuters reports.

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.

Thousands of demonstrators have camped outside the president’s seaside office since mid-March, forcing him to retreat to his barricaded official residence about a kilometer away.