Less than a week into the job, Wickremesinghe said he was forced to print money to pay salaries, which will pressure the nation’s currency. The government is working to obtain dollars in the open market to pay for three ships stocked with crude oil and furnace oil that have been anchored in Sri Lankan waters.

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But he is yet to appoint a finance minister, who will have to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for badly needed financial help for the country.

Former Finance Minister Ali Sabry had held preliminary talks with the IMF, but he quit along with Mahinda Rajapaksa last week.

Sri Lanka is sliding into a default as the grace period on two unpaid foreign bonds ends on Wednesday, the latest blow to a country rattled by economic pain and social unrest.

Protesters have said they will keep up their campaign as long as Gotabaya Rajapaksa remains president. They have also labelled Wickremesinghe a stooge and criticised his appointment of four cabinet ministers, all members of the political party run by the Rajapaksa brothers.

Wickremesinghe said he took the role for the good of the country.

In Colombo, the commercial capital, long queues of auto rickshaws, the most popular means of transport in the city, lined up at gas stations in a fruitless wait for fuel.

“I have been in the queue for more than six hours,” said one driver, Mohammad Ali. “We spend almost six to seven hours in the line just to get petrol.”

Another driver, Mohammad Naushad, said the gas station he was waiting at had run out of fuel.

“We’ve been here since 7, 8am in the morning and it is still not clear if they will have fuel or not,” he said. “When will it come, no one knows. Is there any point in our waiting here, we also don’t know.”

Hit hard by the COVID pandemic, rising oil prices and populist tax cuts by the Rajapaksas, the strategic Indian Ocean island nation, where China and India are battling for influence, is in the midst of a crisis unparalleled since its independence in 1948.

A chronic foreign exchange shortage has led to rampant inflation and shortages of medicine, fuel and other essentials, bringing thousands out on the streets in protest.

“The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives,” Wickremesinghe said. “We must immediately establish a national assembly or political body with the participation of all political parties to find solutions for the present crisis.”