Sri Lankan lawmakers convened on Saturday to begin the process of electing a new leader, after president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled overseas and resigned following mass protests over the country’s economic collapse. <br /> <br />Rajapaksa submitted his resignation on Friday as he left for Singapore, after he fled to the Maldives earlier in the week to escape a popular uprising over the role his family played in Sri Lanka’s worst economic meltdown since independence from Britain in 1948.
