C T Online Desk: Amid the deepening political and economic crisis in Sri Lanka since late March, a news report claims that Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa would step down.
The Colombo Page news portal reports that it learnt of the leader agreeing to resign at a special cabinet meeting chaired by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the President’s House on Friday night.
With the resignation of the prime minister, the cabinet will also automatically dissolve, it says, adding, Mahinda is ready to resign and join the opposition if the solution to the crisis is his resignation.
Meanwhile, political sources told the online newspaper Mahinda is due to announce his resignation in a special statement on Monday.
“It is reported that a cabinet reshuffle is also scheduled to take place next week,” according to the portal.
However, News First reported that he has no plans to resign and that the president has not asked him to step down.
Even a few days earlier, Mahinda reportedly refused to resign despite his brother, President Gotabaya, urging him to quit.
The Daily Mirror newspaper on May 1 quoted sources as it reported that Mahinda was against resignation as he had the majority support in the parliament.
Mahinda informed the president that he would not vacate his seat at a time when he was trying to resolve the economic crisis, but if the President wanted to sack him, he could do so, the report stated.
There is widespread demand for the president to appoint a new interim government with a new prime minister while there is another section that says that Mahinda cannot be removed as he still holds the majority in parliament.
Sri Lankan cabinet saw a massive reshuffle on April 3 as all 26 ministers aside from the two Rajapaksa brothers stepped down during a late-night meeting.
Three other members of the powerful Rajapaksa family were among those who quit then, amid mounting public anger against the acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines plaguing the South Asian nation of 22 million.
The youngest Rajapaksa brother, finance minister Basil, and the eldest, Chamal, who held the agricultural portfolio, and the family’s scion Namal, the sports minister, all resigned.
As calls mount to seek the Sri Lankan government’s immediate resignation, Gotabaya on Friday declared a state of emergency for the second time in five weeks, giving security forces sweeping powers as a nationwide strike demanding his resignation brought the country to a standstill.
Thousands have been camped outside his seafront office for nearly a month to urge his resignation.
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis took hold after the coronavirus pandemic hammered income from tourism and remittances.
Unable to pay for fuel imports, utilities have imposed daily blackouts to ration electricity, while long lines of people snake around service stations for petrol and kerosene.
Hospitals are short of vital medicines and the government has appealed to citizens abroad for donations.
Last month, the tiny island nation announced it was defaulting on its $51 billion foreign debt.
