Recently, Sri Lanka went bankrupt, the president and prime minister both announced their resignations, and the news that a large number of officials fled by plane overnight has made a lot of noise on the Internet. Unexpectedly, this country, which many people have not heard of, is actually well known to everyone in this way and has become the talk of tea after dinner.
How did a country that was once rich, made of rich forests, wetlands, farmland, and oceans, rich in industrial minerals, and developed fisheries and tourism, step by step towards "bankruptcy"? This starts with COVID-19.
As mentioned earlier, Sri Lanka is a city with a developed tourism industry, and after the epidemic lasted for more than two years, their tourism industry fell into a trough, which led to a series of national crises, and finally fell into the quagmire of public debt and could not get out.
Sri Lanka had a chance to escape, but the country's rulers are all from the same family, the Rajapaksa family, and the president, prime minister, finance minister, etc. are all members of this family. You can imagine what a country monopolized by the family will look like.
Three months earlier, on March 31, hundreds of protesters had tried to break into the president's residence because of their dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the country's economic crisis. A day later, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a national state of emergency.
Affected by the epidemic and other factors, Sri Lanka has experienced problems such as lack of foreign exchange, high prices, shortage of materials, and shortage of power supply. In this context, there is political instability in the country, and opposition parties have demanded that the Government step down. After more than a month of peaceful demonstrations, the protests escalated into violent clashes, and former Prime Minister Mahinda also announced his resignation. In order to quell the riots, Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defense even issued a "local shooting order" against those who smashed and looted.
On May 11, local time, after the resignation of his brother and former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he would appoint a new prime minister and a new cabinet within this week to prevent the country from falling into anarchy and maintain government affairs that had been suspended.
"I ask for your help in keeping the state apparatus undisturbed in order to protect people's lives and property and to provide them with the necessities not to allow the country to collapse at this critical juncture." "I therefore urge all Sri Lankans to exercise restraint and caution at this juncture," Gotabaya said. ”
However, the new prime minister was unable to solve the problem at hand after taking office, and on July 6, Sri Lanka's prime minister said that the country was bankrupt and the crisis could continue until the end of 2023.
On July 9, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had fled his residence and announced that he would resign on July 13 as protesters broke through the barrier and stormed the presidential palace. On the same day, the Prime Minister also expressed his willingness to resign, and a large number of Sri Lankan officials fled by plane.
On July 10, protesters in Sri Lanka rioted as the president, prime minister, and a large number of officials fled, burning the prime minister's residence and taking photos in bed in the president's bedroom. According to SZMeds, the anti-epidemic fighters found millions of dollars in cash in the presidential palace.
On July 11, sri Lanka's president officially announced his resignation, but did not wait until July 13.
Sri Lanka, which is across the sea from India to the northwest, has a long history of ethnic culture, known in Chinese texts as the Shizi (Lion) Sub-Country or sinhalese State, and was considered a more economical tropical island destination than the Maldives before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic. "There's everything but snow," foreign tourists say of it.
How a country has come to this point is thought-provoking.
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