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.

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.