Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared a nationwide state of emergency in his role as interim president after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives on Wednesday, prompting further protests in Sri Lanka. in the midst of a serious economic crisis.
“The prime minister as interim president has declared a state of emergency (across the country) and imposed a curfew in the western province,” Wickremesinghe’s media secretary Dinouk Colombage told Reuters. The curfew goes into effect immediately.
Sri Lanka’s main opposition party will name its leader, Sajith Premadasa, as the country’s next president when elections are held in parliament on July 20, a party official said on Tuesday.
crisis in sri lanka
Sri Lanka, an island in the Indian Ocean located below India, has been facing for a few months what is considered the country’s worst crisis since independence in the late 1940s. With inflation above 18%, fuel shortages it has already led to protests, injuries and the resignation of the prime minister.
On Saturday, protesters stormed the Sri Lankan president’s official residence in Colombo. More than 100,000 people gathered outside the building, urging the leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to step down because of the country’s economic crisis.
A video broadcast on Sri Lankan television showed protesters entering the president’s home – Rajapaksa’s office and residence in the commercial capital – after breaking through security cords put up by police.
The country is currently the 64th largest economy in the world, according to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and faces a combination of problems of its own and common to a number of nations.
The country’s inflation scenario has worsened especially since October 2021. Since April 2022, the official inflation index has remained above double digits, with no signs of having reached a peak.
On June 6, Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said that the country is “bankrupt”, and that millions of people are struggling to buy basic goods such as food, medicine and fuel.
Source: CNN Brasil
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