COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s president fled the country early Wednesday, slipping away only hours before he promised to resign under pressure from…
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife left aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for the Maldives, the air force said in a statement. That brought little relief to the island nation gripped for months by an economic disaster that has triggered severe shortages of food and fuel — and now is beset by political chaos.
Protesters have already seized the president’s home and office and the official residence of the prime minister following months of demonstrations that have all but dismantled the Rajapaksa family’s political dynasty, which ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades. Nearby, 28-year-old Sithara Sedaraliyanage and her 49-year-old mother wore black banners around their foreheads that read “Gota Go Home,” the rallying cry of the demonstrations.
The shortages have sown despair among Sri Lanka’s 22 million people and were all the more shocking because before the recent crisis, the economy had been expanding and a comfortable middle class growing.
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