Despite protests against his management of the country’s greatest economic crisis in decades, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will not resign, according to a minister.
Rajapaksa, who has been in power since 2019 with other members of his family in key positions, lifted the state of emergency late Tuesday after dozens of politicians quit the ruling coalition, leaving his government in a minority.
For weeks, Sri Lankans have been without fuel, electricity, food, drugs, and other necessities, and physicians believe the entire health system might collapse in weeks.
People are publicly breaking the emergency and a weekend curfew to demand Rajapaksa’s overthrow. Protests began a month ago and have grown in recent days, with people openly defying the emergency and a weekend curfew to demand Rajapaksa’s downfall.
“May I remind you that 6.9 million people voted for the president,” highways minister Johnston Fernando said in parliament on Wednesday in response to criticism from the opposition and cries of “Go home Gota”.
“As a government, we are clearly saying the president will not resign under any circumstances. We will face this.”
Following Fernando’s speech, nearly 200 doctors, some dressed in blue scrubs, marched down a road near a national hospital in Colombo’s commercial capital, chanting anti-government slogans.
“Strengthen people’s right to live,” one banner said. Make a health-related emergency declaration.”
Malaka Samararathna, a cancer patient at the state-run Apeksha Hospital, claimed that not just drugs but also chemicals required in testing are in low supply.
“The patients who are on chemotherapy, we have to monitor them carefully daily,” Samararathna said.
“If we can’t do it, we can’t decide the way forward. We can’t decide on the proper management. Sometimes our chemotherapy drugs are causing severe side effects, so the only way we have to find it is by doing these investigations.”
At least one critical drug was not accessible at all in his Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children, according to Vasan Ratnasingam, a spokeswoman for the Government Medical Officers’ Association, which represents more than 16,000 doctors across the country.
“Other than that, 102 essential drugs are in short supply. Some of those drugs are frequently used, such as for respiratory tract infections and for urinary tract infections,” he said, warning doctors would have to stop routine treatments and surgeries if immediate action was not taken.
On Wednesday, the speaker of parliament warned that the island nation’s 22 million people face famine as a result of the devastating economic crisis.
More difficulties, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana warned parliamentarians, were on the way.
“We are told this is the worst crisis, but I think this is just the beginning,” Abeywardana said at the start of a two-day debate on the worsening economic woes.
“The food, gas and electricity shortages will get worse. There will be very acute food shortages and starvation.”
