Sri Lankan protesters occupied the entrance to the president’s office for a second day on Sunday, demanding Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign over the debt-ridden country’s worst economic crisis in memory.
Hundreds of demonstrators weathered heavy rain with raincoats and umbrellas and chanted anti-government slogans. Some called for the entire Parliament to disband to make way for a younger leadership.
“We will stay on, we will leave only when we have chased them out,” Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, a 32-year-old ex-soldier, said of Rajapaksa, his influential family and all the lawmakers.
Pushpakumara said he fought in the last stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war with ethnic Tamil rebels, which government soldiers won in 2009 after 2 1/2 decades. Both Rajapaksa, who served as a powerful defense bureaucrat, and his older brother Mahinda, who was then president and is currently prime minister, were credited with the victory.
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