BANGKOK: Sri Lanka’s former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has left Singapore, the island-state’s immigration authority said in a statement on Thursday while a local media outlet reported that he is traveling to Thailand by plane.

The Straits Times reported that Rajapaksa boarded a flight from Singapore to Bangkok on Thursday evening after the country’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said in a statement that he had left Singapore.

Rajapaksa is expected to stay temporarily in Thailand, a second Southeast Asian country since he fled Sri Lanka for Singapore on July 14 and resigned from office shortly afterwards, following unprecedented unrest over his government’s handling of the worst economic crisis in seven decades, and days after thousands of protesters stormed the president’s official residence and office.

The former military officer, who is the first Sri Lankan head of state to quit mid-term, is expected to travel from Singapore to Thailand’s capital of Bangkok on Thursday, two sources said.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 12 2022

Like Business on Facebook, follow @DailyNCourier on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.