After fleeing to Singapore in the wake of widespread protests against the country’s economic collapse, two official sources confirmed on Thursday that Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has filed a letter of resignation.
As per the reports, Rajapaksa sent a letter of resignation to the country’s speaker of the parliament via email on Thursday.
The sources stated that it was not assured that the email-based communication, which was issued shortly after Rajapaksa arrived in Singapore, would be approved.
To enforce the curfew, soldiers patrolled the streets of Colombo, the commercial center.
According to a person acquainted with the issue, Rajapaksa, who fled to the Maldives on Wednesday to avoid a popular rebellion over his family’s involvement in a devastating economic crisis, flew to Singapore on a Saudi Arabian airline flight.
Rajapaksa was received by a number of security officers and was observed leaving the airport VIP area in a procession of black vehicles, according to a passenger on the flight spoke to Reuters.
The airline personnel who were on board with Reuters described the president, who was dressed in all black and traveled in business class with his wife and two guards, as “quiet” and “friendly”.
The attempts by Rajapaksa to obtain a visa for the United States were reportedly unsuccessful, according to diplomatic sources, because he had renounced his US citizenship in 2019 prior to competing for president.
The economic crisis has been the subject of months-long protests, which culminated this weekend when hundreds of thousands of people occupied government facilities in Colombo and demanded an end to corruption, runaway inflation, and shortages of essential supplies.
