‘These leaders must go’

Tens of thousands marched on beleaguered Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office yesterday, in the biggest protest to date over the country's dire economic and political crisis.

Sri Lanka's 22 million people have seen weeks of power blackouts and severe shortages of food, fuel and other essentials in the country's worst downturn since independence in 1948.

Yesterday's social-media organised protest drew the largest numbers since the crisis blew up last month according to AFP reporters. And pressure on Rajapaksa intensified further as the country's powerful business community also began withdrawing support for the president.

Men and women poured onto Colombo's seafront promenade and laid siege to the colonial-era Presidential Secretariat, chanting "Go home Gota" and waving the national lion flag.

Barricades blocked the entrance to the president's office with police in riot gear taking up positions inside the tightly guarded compound.

"These are innocent people here. we are all struggling to live. The government must go and allow a capable person to lead the country," one man told the crowd.

The protests appeared to be peaceful, but a police official said teargas and water cannon were at the ready if needed.

Residents said there were widespread protests in the suburbs of the capital too while the Catholic and Anglican churches also brought their followers onto the streets.

"Everyone must get on the streets till the government leave, these leaders must go. You must go. You have destroyed this country," Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the head of the Catholic Church, said.

Sri Lanka's business community, which largely funded Rajapaksa's election campaign, also appeared to ditch the president yesterday.

"The current political and economic impasse simply cannot continue any further, we need a cabinet and interim government within a week at most," said Rohan Masakorala, head of Sri Lanka Association of Manufacturers and Exporters of Rubber products.

The government is preparing for bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund next week, with finance ministry officials saying that sovereign bond-holders and other creditors may have to take a haircut.

New finance minister Ali Sabry told parliament on Friday that he expects $3 billion from the IMF to support the island's balance of payments in the next three years.