Sri Lanka’s president fled the country without stepping down Wednesday, plunging a country already reeling from economic chaos into more political turmoil.
COLOMBO— Protesters demanding a change in leadership then trained their ire on the prime minister and stormed his office.
“We need both ... to go home,” said Supun Eranga, a 28-year-old civil servant in the crowd. “Ranil couldn’t deliver what he promised during his two months, so he should quit. All Ranil did was try to protect the Rajapaksas.” “We will cook here, eat here and live here. We will stay until hands over his resignation,” said Lahiru Ishara, 32, a supervisor at a supermarket in Colombo who has been a part of the protests since they kicked off in April. “There’s no other alternative.”
Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from government coffers for years and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. “I’m 29 years old — I should be having the best time of life but instead I don’t have a job, no money and no life,” he said.
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