Hours after saying that Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had left the country, the island nation’s Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena claimed he had made a mistake, Newswire reported.

The clarification came after he told the BBC in a podcast that Rajapaksa had left and will return to Sri Lanka on Wednesday to resign.

In his apparent gaffe during the podcast, Abeywardena had said that Rajapaksa was currently in a “nearby country” but did not clarify where exactly. The Speaker added that he will remain the interim president till a vote is held in the House to form an all-party government.

There were reports that Rajapaksa had fled Sri Lanka amid protests against the government’s failure to curb the unprecedented economic crisis. He had left his presidential residence in Colombo on July 8, a day ahead of a planned protests seeking resignations of Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The next day, thousands of protestors had stormed the presidential residence during an anti-government march. They had also broken into the home of Wickremesinghe in an affluent Colombo neighbourhood and set it on fire.

On the same day, Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe had said they will resign from their posts.

On Monday, the Speaker told the BBC that while there were some shortcomings on the government’s part, the crisis did not take place due to mismanagement. He blamed the coronavirus pandemic for the economic meltdown.

“The Covid-19 pandemic had created a havoc in the country,” Rajapaksa said. “Economically, we had to spend all our money on vaccinations. And there were lot of other expenses when the epidemic came in the country.”

Meanwhile, the prime minister’s office said in a statement that Rajapaksa has officially informed Wickremesinghe that he will be resigning, reported NewsWire. Sri Lanka’s entire Cabinet has also agreed to resign once an agreement is reached on forming an all-party interim government, reported PTI.

Crisis in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has run out of foreign-exchange reserves that has limited essential imports of fuel, food and medicine, plunging it into the worst economic meltdown in 70 years. The island nation’s inflation rate touched 54.6% year-over-year in June while food inflation shot up to 80%.

As the crisis deepened in April, violent clashes erupted between supporters of Rajapaksa’s party and the anti-government demonstrators. In May, 10 persons had died in the clashes.

The protestors had expressed discontent with the ruling dispensation by burning the ancestral home of the Rajapaksa family in Hambantota in May. The clashes had even forced Gotabaya Rajapaska’s brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was the prime minister at the time, to resign. However, Rajapaksa had refused to step down on multiple occasions.

As part of its efforts to resolve the crisis, Sri Lanka is holding talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package.

On July 5, Wickremesinghe had told Parliament that the country is bankrupt. “We will have to face difficulties in 2023 as well,” he had said. “This is the truth. This is the reality.”

The United Nations has warned that more than a quarter of Sri Lanka’s people are at risk of food shortages. Sri Lanka Medical Council has stated that hospitals were running with minimum resources as the country imports more than 80% of its medical supplies. The top medical body also warned that it would not be able to handle any mass casualties due to the protests.