Sri Lankan prime minister resigns after weeks of protests

Four people, including a ruling party lawmaker, died in Monday’s violence

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa announced on Monday that he had submitted his resignation to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his brother. The resignation arrived after weeks of protests over the country's growing inflation turned violent, requiring the government to impose a curfew and involve the military.

Four people, including a ruling party lawmaker, died in Monday’s violence, police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa told the Associated Press. President Rajapaksa imposed a countrywide curfew Monday evening lasting until Wednesday morning.

For more than a month, protests have spread across the country, drawing people across ethnicities, religions and class. For the first time middle-class Sri Lankans also took to the streets in large numbers, marking a dramatic revolt by many former Rajapaksa supporters, some of whom have spent weeks protesting outside the president’s office.

The protests underscored a dramatic fall from favor of the Rajapaksas, Sri Lanka’s most powerful political dynasty for decades. The brothers were once hailed as heroes by many of the island’s Buddhist-Sinhalese majority for ending the country’s 30-year civil war, and despite accusations of war atrocities, were firmly entrenched at the top of Sri Lankan politics until now.

https://apnews.com/article/business-sri-lanka-indian-ocean-ad2724840cc42f4556797ad868559fae