Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on Wednesday, hours before he was due to step down after widespread protests over his handling of a devastating economic crisis.

Rajapaksa, his wife and two bodyguards left the main international airport near Colombo aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane, the air force said in a statement.

A government source and a person close to Rajapaksa said he was in Male, the capital of the Maldives. The president would most likely proceed to another Asian country from there, the government source said, Reuters reported.

The president’s flight brings an end to the rule of the powerful Rajapaksa clan that has dominated politics in the South Asian nation for the last two decades.

Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over key government buildings in Colombo, blaming the Rajapaksas and their allies for runaway inflation, corruption and a severe lack of fuel and medicines.

Rajapaksa was due to step down as president on Wednesday to make way for a unity government after protesters stormed his and the prime minister’s official residences.

The president has not been seen in public since Friday.

Sri Lanka has been run by the powerful Rajapaksa family for the better part of the last two decades. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected as the country’s president in November 2019.

That would make Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe the acting president, although he has also offered to resign. If he does, the speaker will be the acting president until a new president is elected, as per the constitution.