Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign amid protests

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated the country’s politics for much of the past two decades, has agreed to resign, the parliament’s speaker said, after antigovernment protesters stormed and occupied the president’s residence and office. In a televised statement on Saturday night, Sri Lanka’s parliamentary speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, said the president had informed him of his intention to step down Wednesday “to ensure a peaceful transition of power.” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said earlier Saturday he will also resign. The political fallout follows months of public unrest. The South Asian nation’s wilting economy has seen Sri Lankans endure months of double-digit inflation, rolling power blackouts and severe shortages of fuel and medicine.

Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves are depleted to the point that it can no longer afford to pay for essential imports and the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history in May. With queues outside gas stations snaking for miles around city blocks, authorities closed schools and restricted gas supplies to essential services to conserve fuel. Braving tear gas and water cannons in the capital, Colombo, protesters—many waving the national flag and clad in black—stormed the president’s residence and office Saturday, in one of the largest antigovernment demonstrations in the country this year amid a deepening sovereign debt crisis. Mostly peaceful demonstrations have been held daily outside the office since March. Television news footage showed large crowds overrunning security barricades before breaching the official residence of Mr. Rajapaksa. Some were later seen taking a dip in the compound’s swimming pool. Videos purportedly filmed by protesters and shared widely on social media showed scores of men rifling through drawers, sitting in chairs and lounging on a four-poster bed inside a bedroom of the residence. One man was shown doing bicep curls in a gym.