Sri Lanka Crisis : The Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksha who is due to officially resign on Wednesday, July 13. Rajapaksha alongwith his wife were trying to flee the country on Monday. They were stuck in his own country as the immigration staff blocked their way was reportedly trying to escape to Dubai on Monday. He reportedly missed four flights to United Arab Emirates and he and his wife had to return to a military base.
Gotabaya is considering using a navy patrol craft to flee the island nation after Colombo airport immigration staff rejected his attempts to flee the country.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence in Colombo after thousands stormed the building, overran armed troops and made themselves at home. Visuals overflooded of protesters swimming in the pool, cooking in the kitchen, playing in the bedrooms and also were reports that showed cleaning their own mess.
Sri Lanka Crisis : What plunged Sri Lanka into such chaos –
- Sri Lanka focused on domestic markets instead of selling goods abroad, hence economy deteriorated
- The Easter Sunday terror attack in April 2019 hit hard the Sri Lanka’s tourism industry, one of the biggest foreign currency earners.
- President Gotabaya Rajapaksha ordered sweeping tax cuts that led to loss of one million tax payers and the economy of the country crippled.
- Then came COVID-19 which hit hard the entire world drastically.
- In 2021, the government tried to stop the outflow of foreign currency by banning chemical fertiliser imports, as a result farmers switched to organic fertilizers. This resulted in huge crop failures. To deal with the loss started buying food stocks from abroad which made the foreign currency worse.