Sri Lanka Declares State of Emergency as President Flees to Maldives

Sri Lanka is under a state of emergency after its president fled the country on Wednesday, leaving a prime minister in charge of a nation already in economic and political turmoil.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 73, was set to resign Wednesday. Instead, the leader fled the country for the Maldives, multiple outlets including The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post have reported.

In the intervening hours, it was unclear who was leading Sri Lanka, the Times reported. This resulted in protesters to surround Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's residence in the capital of Colombo, where they were met with tear gas.

Shortly after Rajapaksa took office in 2019, the island country of 22 million people became unsettled, due to a series of "political missteps" taken by the president, according to the outlet.

Sri Lanka is now near-bankruptcy due to a decrease in tourism due to the pandemic, the AP reported. In addition, Rajapaksa's move to ban fertilizers in the country, in an effort to clean up the environment and the population's collective health, backfired, leading to food, medicine and fuel shortages.

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For months, protestors have been calling for the leader to step down, but Rajapaksa has resisted. When thousands of them dramatically overtook his residence last Saturday, he said he would resign, the Post reported.

Rajapaksa has been in power since before the pandemic's onset, and is part of a political dynasty.

His brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, considered to be a war hero, was elected president in 2005 and became an iconic figure when he declared victory in 2009, putting an end to a 26-year civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels.

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The Rajapaksas had ruled with an iron fist for much of the past two decades before Wednesday's upheaval.

"The sight of Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing Sri Lanka on an air force plane represents [the downfall] of this family," said Ganeshan Wignaraja, senior research associate at the British think tank ODI Global, told CNN.

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Sri Lanka's succession plan from its constitution states that in the event that a president resigns, the prime minister takes on his duties in an interim capacity, the Times reported. It will then be up to Parliament to vote on a new president to complete Rajapaksa's term, which had two years left.