Protests erupt across Sri Lanka

Tens of thousands of enraged drivers blocked a major highway into Colombo on Tuesday as a result of a severe fuel shortage, according to police and local officials.

Protests demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa have been ongoing since the country’s worst economic crisis since the country’s independence in 1948.

Sri Lankan fuel stations across the country ran out of petrol and diesel during recent protests, resulting in multiple sections of a 71-mile highway between Kandy and Colombo being cut off.

Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the country’s largest oil retailer, raised prices by up to 64.2% on Tuesday and lifted a rationing system that restricted how much fuel consumers could buy last week.

On Monday, Lanka IOC, the country’s third-largest petrol retailer, raised its prices by up to 35%.

Protesters in Colombo have been calling on Rajapaksa to resign for 11 straight days, and now the drivers are joining them.

As of Tuesday, doctors at the country’s primary children’s hospital began a walkout in protest of a severe medication and equipment shortage.

Rajapaksa on Monday appointed a new cabinet that excluded two of his brothers and a nephew, who had held key posts in the previous setup, and acknowledged public outrage over the ruling family’s mismanagement, in an effort to address growing calls for his entire government to resign.

However, the position of prime minister will remain in the hands of Mahinda, his elder brother.

While acknowledging that Sri Lanka should have begun talks with the International Monetary Fund about a bailout “much earlier,” President Kumaratunga told his new cabinet on Monday that “people are suffering because of the economic crisis.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is looking to lend Sri Lanka between three and four billion dollars in an effort to alleviate the country’s balance-of-payments crisis and replenish its depleted reserves.

Hundreds of Rajapaksa legislators have defected to the opposition, taking their places on the opposing side of the aisle in parliament on Tuesday.

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