Rajapaksa announces his resignation as President of Sri Lanka

July 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has made his resignation official this Thursday as head of the Sri Lankan Executive after announcing it at the beginning of the week and in the framework of the serious economic crisis that is plaguing the island and that has led to strong protests.

Rajapaksa has sent a letter to the president of the Ceylonese Parliament, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, in which he informs him of his resignation from the position, as reported by the local newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’, according to sources from the Parliament’s Press Department.

This same source has indicated that the letter has been sent to Abeywardena by email and that, due to a series of legal procedures, it cannot be published until, presumably, this Friday.

Rajapaksa, who has been temporarily replaced by the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, thus gives in after several months of protests over the increase in prices and lack of food, medicine and fuel, which has put the small Asian island in front of its worst crisis economy since independence from the British colonial yoke.

The popular revolution in Sri Lanka has thus forced the definitive downfall of the Rajapaksa family, after Gotabaya forced his brother Mahinda to step down as prime minister in early May in a superfluous attempt to quell the protests.