COLOMBO/SINGAPORE—Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa submitted a letter of resignation on Thursday, a spokesperson for the parliament speaker said, hours after fleeing to Singapore following mass protests over an economic meltdown.
The announcement triggered jubilation in the commercial capital Colombo where protesters massed outside the presidential secretariat, defying a city-wide curfew.
Crowds set off firecrackers, shouted slogans and danced ecstatically at the Gota Go Gama protest site, named mockingly after Rajapaksa’s first name.
“The whole country will celebrate today,” Damitha Abeyrathne, an activist, said. “It’s a big victory.”
“We never thought we would get this country free from them,” she added, referring to the Rajapaksa family who dominated the South Asian country’s politics for two decades….