Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - The speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament said on Monday that a new president will be chosen on July 20....
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - The speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament said on Monday that a new president will be chosen on July 20. This comes after protesters broke into the homes of the current president and prime minister, who have both offered to step down because of the country's bad economy.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is going to step down on Wednesday. As defence secretary, he oversaw the brutal defeat of the Tamil Tigers rebels. His brothers and nephew had already quit their jobs as ministers before he did. At the time, Sri Lanka was in the middle of its worst crisis since it got its independence from Britain in 1948.
Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said in a statement that Parliament will meet again on Friday. Five days later, they will vote to choose a new president.
"At the meeting of party leaders that took place today, it was agreed that this was necessary to make sure that a new government that includes all parties is in place," the statement said.
"The party in power has said that the prime minister and the cabinet are ready to step down so that an all-party government can be formed."
Protesters set fire to the home of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and he has now said he will step down. His office said Rajapaksa had told the prime minister about his plans to resign and that the cabinet would also quit once an agreement was made to form a government with all parties.
The central bank governor told Reuters that the political instability could hurt talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about a rescue package.
Governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe gave signs that he would keep his job, even though he said in May that he could quit if there wasn't political stability on the 22-million-person island.
Leaders of the protest movement have said that people will occupy the president's and prime minister's homes in Colombo until they finally step down. At the president's house over the weekend, protesters jumped into the pool, sat on a four-poster bed, fought over a treadmill, and sat on the sofas.
Monday was a calm day in Colombo, even though hundreds of people walked into the president's office and home to see the colonial-era buildings. Police made no attempt to intervene.
Jude Hansana, 31, who has been at a protest site outside the residence since early April, said, "We are not going anywhere until this president leaves and we have a government that the people like."
Dushantha Gunasinghe, another protester, said that he had to walk part of the way to Colombo because there wasn't enough gas.
The 28-year-old man sitting outside the president's office said, "I'm so tired I can hardly talk." "I came all this way by myself because I think we need to finish this. We need a new government, and this one needs to go home."
On Saturday, a group of protesters at the president's home found 17.8 million rupees, which is about $50,000. The police said they got the money. A video on social media of the kids counting out the money went viral.
Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations, called for a smooth change of government and "long-term solutions" to the economic crisis.
"IT'S A TOTAL MESS"
Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the opposition, said that his party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya, which has 54 seats in the 225-member parliament, was ready to join the government.
He said, "As the opposition, we are ready to take charge to help stabilise the country and rebuild the economy." "We'll choose a new president and prime minister and put together a new government," he said.
Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe were not in their homes when the protesters rushed in, and they have not been seen in public since Friday. Rajapaksa's whereabouts were not clear, but Wickremesinghe's media team said in a statement that he met with cabinet ministers at the prime minister's office on Monday.
Wickremesinghe's private home in a wealthy part of Colombo was burned down on Saturday, and three people have been taken into custody as suspects.
Constitutional experts say that once the president and prime minister step down, the speaker will become acting president until parliament chooses a new president to finish Rajapaksa's term, which was set to end in 2024.
Sri Lankans mostly blame Rajapaksa for the collapse of their tourism-based economy, which was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and a ban on chemical fertilisers, which hurt farm output. In the end, the ban was lifted.
The Rajapaksa regime made it hard for the government to pay its bills because of the growing debt and the large tax breaks it gave. As oil prices went up, foreign exchange reserves were used up quickly.
The country hardly has any money left to buy fuel from other countries, so there are long lines in front of shops that sell cooking gas. Last month, headline inflation reached 54.6%, and the central bank has warned that it could reach 70% in the next few months.
Government bonds, which were already in default, fell even more because of the political crisis. The 2025 bond dropped as much as 2.25 cents on the dollar, and most are now worth less than 30 cents, which is 70 percent less than what they were originally worth.
Lutz Roehmeyer of Capitulum Asset Management, which owns Sri Lankan dollar bonds, said that an IMF deal could happen this year or next, but that a restructuring was more likely to happen in 2024 or 2025, not next year.
Roehmeyer said, "Everything is a mess." "People think that the change of power will be more chaotic and that it will take longer to come to an agreement."
