Sri Lanka’s main city, Colombo, was calm on Thursday as people waited for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, although a curfew was imposed and troops patrolled the streets to prevent any outbreak of violence. Rajapaksa, who fled to the Maldives on Wednesday to escape a popular uprising over his family’s role in a crippling economic crisis, had arrived in Singapore, according to a Sri Lankan government source.

His decision on Wednesday to make his ally Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe the acting President triggered more protests, with demonstrators storming parliament and the Premier’s office, demanding that he quit too. “We want Ranil to go home,” Malik Perera, a 29-year-old rickshaw driver who said he took part in the parliament protests, said on Thursday.

“They have sold the country, we want a good person to take over, until then we won’t stop.” Protests against the economic crisis have simmered for months and came to a head last weekend when hundreds of thousands of people took over government buildings in Colombo, blaming the powerful Rajapaksa family and allies for runaway inflation, and shortages of basic goods, and corruption.

Rajapaksa, his wife, and two bodyguards fled the country on an air force plane early on Wednesday and headed to the Maldives. Inside the President’s residence, ordinary Sri Lankans wandered the halls on Thursday, taking in the building’s extensive art collection, luxury cars, and swimming pool.

“The fight is not over,” said Terance Rodrigo, a 26-year-old student who said he has been inside the compound since it was taken over by protesters on Saturday. “We have to make society better than this. The government is not solving people’s problems.” The usual protest sites, however, were calm and organisers started handing the residences back to the government. “With the President out of the country ... holding the captured places holds no symbolic value anymore,” Chameera Dedduwage, one of the organisers, said.