Sri Lankan protestors storm PM office after president flees country

Sri Lanka's president fled the country without stepping down Wednesday, plunging a country already reeling from economic chaos into more political turmoil.

Sri Lanka’s president fled the country without stepping down Wednesday, plunging a country already reeling from economic chaos into more political turmoil. Protesters demanding a change in leadership then rained their ire on the prime minister and stormed his office.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife left aboard an air force plane bound for the Maldives–and he made his prime minister the acting president in his absence. That appeared to only further roil passions in the island nation, which has been gripped for months by an economic meltdown that has triggered severe shortages of food and fuel.

Thousands of protesters–who had anticipated that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe would be appointed acting president and wanted him gone– rallied outside his office compound and some scaled the walls. The crowd roared its support for and tossed water bottles to those charging in.

Dozens could later be seen inside the office or standing on a rooftop terrace waving Sri Lanka’s flag–the latest in a series of takeovers of government buildings by demonstrators seeking a new government.

“We need both … to go home,” said Supun Eranga, a 28-year-old civil servant in the crowd. “Ranil couldn’t deliver what he promised during his two months, so he should quit. All Ranil did was try to protect the Rajapaksas.”

But Wickremesinghe, who declared a state of emergency, appeared on television to reiterate that he would not leave until a new government was in place–and it was not clear when that would happen, with the opposition deeply fractured.

Although he fled, Rajapaksa has yet to resign, but the speaker of the parliament said the president assured him he would later in the day.

The political impasse has only threatened to worsen the bankrupt nation’s economic collapse since the absence of an alternative government could delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from neighboring India and from China.