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Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigns after fleeing to Singapore
It was not immediately clear if the letter, sent shortly after Rajapaksa arrived in Singapore, would be accepted in email form, the source added.
Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa emailed a letter of resignation to Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena on Thursday, a spokesperson of the Speaker said, hours after fleeing to Singapore following mass protests over an economic meltdown.
Rajapaksa's resignation would become official on Friday, once the document had been legally verified, the spokesperson said.
It was not immediately clear if the letter, sent shortly after Rajapaksa arrived in Singapore, would be accepted in email form, a source told news agency Reuters.
The announcement triggered jubilation in the commercial capital Colombo where protesters massed outside the presidential secretariat, defying a city-wide curfew.
Crowds set off firecrackers, shouted slogans and danced ecstatically at the Gota Go Gama protest site, named mockingly after Rajapaksa's first name.
"The whole country will celebrate today," Damitha Abeyrathne, an activist, said. "It's a big victory."
"We never thought we would get this country free from them," she added, referring to the Rajapaksa family who dominated the South Asian country's politics for two decades.
Rajapaksa landed in Singapore on Thursday after fleeing mass protests over his country's economic meltdown, as troops patrolled the commercial capital Colombo to enforce a curfew.
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Rajapaksa, who fled to the Maldives on Wednesday to escape a popular uprising over his family's role in a crippling economic crisis, headed on to Singapore on a Saudi Arabian airline flight, according to a person familiar with the situation.
A passenger on the flight, who declined to be named, told news agency Reuters that Rajapaksa was met by a group of security guards and was seen leaving the airport VIP area in a convoy of black vehicles.
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The flight landed at Singapore's Changi Airport at 7.17 pm local time (4.47 pm IST). Sri Lankan security sources say the president - who missed the Wednesday deadline to resign his post, leaving Sri Lanka facing further uncertainty - is expected to stay in Singapore for some time.
He might later move to the UAE, sources said.
A Singapore foreign ministry statement, meanwhile, has ruled out talk of asylum for Rajapaksa. The ministry said the Lankan president had entered the city-state for a private visit. "He has not asked for asylum and neither has he been granted any asylum. Singapore generally does not grant requests for asylum,” the ministry stressed.
(With inputs from agencies)
