Outgoing Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa returned to his country on Friday after fleeing the country following mass protests last July.

And the British BBC network reported that “Rajapaksa was living in Thailand on a temporary visa and returned to Sri Lanka via Singapore”, and explained that “a number of (unnamed) ministers were received by Rajapaksa at the capital’s airport. .Colombo.” The network quoted a Sri Lankan Defense Ministry spokesman (unnamed) that Rajapaksa “will be given protection as a former president.”

And local media reports say: “The government has given the former president a house in the center of the capital, Colombo, without giving any details.”

Sri Lanka has been in a state of emergency ever since it forgot about the past after the mass protests that led to the departure of Rajapaksa from the country.

Last July, Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the country’s new president, succeeding Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka is suffering from severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine amid its worst crisis since independence in 1948, after the coronavirus pandemic caused a significant drop in tourism revenue and expatriate remittances.

With no foreign exchange reserves following the collapse of its tourism-dependent economy, the country of 22 million has defaulted on all of its foreign debt.