Sri Lanka: Hundreds of irate protestors gathered outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s private residence in Colombo late Thursday night, following a 13-hour power outage caused by Sri Lanka’s increasing economic crisis.
Riot cops were quickly dispatched to the scene. They fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the throng, but those who were agitated remained on the scene, yelling in Sinhala, “Gota go home.” Many people were brandishing anti-government placards and demanding that the administration leave immediately since it had “mismanaged” the country’s economy.
Sri Lanka witnessing a severe economic situation
Sri Lanka has been witnessing a catastrophic situation unfold swiftly over the last few weeks. Acute shortages of food, gasoline, and cooking gas, as well as increasing prices, have fueled public discontent. The crisis was sparked by a long-brewing Balance of Payments imbalance that worsened following the pandemic and led to a dollar shortage late last year. It quickly accelerated from the start of this year, wreaking havoc on Sri Lankans.
While the political opposition has staged enormous protests, citizens’ groups have organized daily and weekly marches across the country, calling on the government to resign.
In a televised address on March 16, President Rajapaksa remarked, “I am well aware of the hardships experienced by the people,” promising to make “tough decisions” to find solutions. He is, however, widely chastised for “mismanagement.”
Until Thursday, when hundreds of men and women carried their rage to the President’s house, the current wave of protests had been mostly calm. After President Rajapaksa’s landslide election victory in 2019 and his party’s subsequent huge success in the 2020 general elections, the current situation has emerged as the ruling administration’s biggest political problem yet.