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Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaska resigned on Monday after months of violent protests. The nation has defaulted on its international debt funds and rationed gasoline amid skyrocketing inflation that has plunged a lot of its residents into poverty.
The PM handed his resignation to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his youthful brother, in accordance with a number of media experiences. The resignation dissolved Rajapaska’s cupboard, which was solely fashioned final month after all the earlier cupboard members resigned.
Sri Lanka has been rocked by greater than two months of steady protests, and this unrest continued on Monday. Shortly earlier than Rajapaska’s resignation, pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed outdoors authorities buildings within the capital of Colombo, and police used tear gasoline and water cannons to interrupt up the melee.
A whole bunch of armed troopers had been deployed in Colombo to quell the unrest, and a curfew was imposed. That curfew was broadly ignored, nevertheless, and a minimum of 76 individuals had been injured in Monday’s clashes, the Occasions of India reported. In line with one other report by AFP, a legislator from Rajapaska’s occasion was discovered useless on the outskirts of Colombo after he allegedly opened hearth on protesters blocking his automotive.
Sri Lanka has skilled shortages of meals, gasoline and drugs in latest months, as inflation soared to just about 30% in April. Gasoline rationing was launched final month, and lengthy queues for staples resembling rice, milk powder, and medical provides had been reported.
Rajapaska’s authorities introduced in April that it might halt funds on its international debt, with Central Financial institution Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe explaining that the nation had to make use of its dwindling reserves to import meals and gasoline as an alternative. Sri Lanka was as a result of pay some $7 billion of its international debt this yr, however Finance Minister Ali Sabry introduced final week that the nation’s reserves had fallen to under $50 million.
The monetary and humanitarian disaster has been blamed by the federal government on the Covid-19 pandemic, which reduce into the island nation’s income generated by tourism. Nonetheless, excessive authorities spending and tax cuts additionally depleted state coffers, whereas makes an attempt to repay international bonds by growing cash printing led to skyrocketing inflation.
It’s unclear whether or not Rajapaska’s resignation will calm aggrieved residents. Commerce unions on Monday referred to as for every week of continued protests culminating in a march to parliament to demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa additionally step down, AP reported.
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