COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse, who has gone into hiding, will resign on Wednesday. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abayawardhana announced that Parliament will meet from July 15 and elect a new president on July 20. All the members of the cabinet expressed their willingness to resign after the office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced that the President and the Prime Minister will resign tomorrow. In a meeting of the opposition parties chaired by the Speaker yesterday, the ministers made it clear that they will resign as soon as the interim all-party government is formed.

If the President and Prime Minister step down, Speaker Abayawardhana will take over as interim President. The agitators are of the position that they will not back down from the agitation until Gotabaya resigns.