In his letter of resignation, the former leader assure qSri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves were low when he took office in November 2019, and the pandemic subsequently devastated the economy. Official figures, however, show that Sri Lanka had a comfortable reserve of $7.5 billion at the end of 2019.
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His letter was read to Parliament on Saturday July 16. In a brief letter of resignation sent from Singapore where he fled, the former president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, claims to have “the maximum” to prevent the economic catastrophe that is hitting his country, but that the Covid-19 pandemic had reduced his efforts to nothing.
“It is a personal satisfaction for me to have been able to protect our people from the pandemic despite the economic crisis that we were already facing at the time”, says the former leader. The Covid-19 has killed more than 16,500 people on this island of 22 million inhabitants. Gotabaya Rajapaksa had refused to establish containment during the first wave, and had launched to the doctors: “Do not panic”. One of his ministers had assured that Sri Lanka did not need foreign vaccines, and that the local remedies of shamans were more than sufficient.
In his letter, Gotabaya Rajapaksa also assures that Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves were already low when he took office in November 2019, and that the pandemic then devastated the economy. Official figures show, however, that Sri Lanka had a comfortable reserve of 7.5 billion dollars at the end of 2019. These reserves were only one million dollars on the day of his departure, and the country is in cessation payments since mid-April. “The confinements between 2020 and 2021 have eroded foreign exchange reserves”justified the ex-president. “I did my best for the country.”
Sri Lankan MPs will meet next week to elect a successor to the resigning president, who fled to Singapore after protesters invaded his residence on July 9. The Secretary General of Parliament, Dhammika Dasanayake, confirmed that the election would take place on Wednesday. Prime Minister and Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 73, is the favourite. He is also the target of the demonstrators’ anger but has the support of the SLPP, the party of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, which has the largest number of seats in Parliament.