Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to act as interim president
People dance as they celebrate the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at a protest site, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on July 14 2022. REUTERS/ADNAN ABIDIThe speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament formally accepted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation on Friday after he fled to Singapore to escape a popular uprising brought about by his country's worst economic crisis in seven decades.
“We are so happy today that he resigned and we feel that when we, the people, come together, we can do everything,” said Arunanandan, a schoolteacher who had been camping at the main protest site opposite the presidential secretariat for the past three months. “We are the real power in this country.”
Abeywardena said he hoped to complete the process of selecting a new president in seven days and that parliament will reconvene on Saturday. The agenda for the weekend meeting will be decided on Friday, and voting for the next president in parliament was scheduled for July 20. Serpentine queues outside fuel pumps have become common, while the government has closed schools and enforced work-from-home for office workers to conserve fuel. The country of 22-million has nearly run out of dollars for imports and defaulted on foreign loans.
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