Calm returned to the streets of Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo on Sunday and protesters were jubilant as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign after his house was stormed amid outrage over the South Asia nation’s collapsing economy.
Protesters, many wrapped in the Sri Lanka flag, swarmed into his whitewashed colonial-era residence on Saturday, jumped into the swimming pool and sat on a four-poster bed. Others set fire to the private home of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also agreed to resign to make way for an all-party government.
On Sunday protesters were still milling about in the president’s residence, parts of which had been smashed. It has been compounded by large and growing government debt, rising oil prices and a ban on importing chemical fertilizers last year that devastated agriculture. The fertilizer ban was reversed in November.
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