Public anger against Rajapaksas mounting

Military Commentator

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Bankrupt Sri Lanka has received $160 million from the World Bank. The survival of the beleaguered President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is contingent upon Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s capacity to pull Sri Lanka out of its economic morass, though their political resuscitation will be determined by the people, not Parliament.

Sri Lankan media reported this month that Indian troops were being dispatched to Colombo — reminiscent of my time with the IPKF when Buddhist priests would parade outside the Indian embassy in Colombo, carrying ‘IPKF Go Home’ placards. In 1990, the IPKF was ignominiously withdrawn, to be welcomed in Chennai as the ITKP — the ‘Indian Tamil Killing Force’. When the Sri Lankan Army was later being overrun by the LTTE at the Elephant Pass near Jaffna, the priests returned with placards reading “IPKF Come Back”.

Sri Lanka has a penchant for inviting crises: military, economic and political. For the first time in its history, it is battling an economic catastrophe, turned into a political quagmire. The people are demanding accountability.

One family name that sticks out for the ongoing tragedy is surprisingly that of the Rajapaksas. They were venerated as gods and emperors after defeating the invincible LTTE in the manner that Sinhala king Dutugemunu vanquished the Tamil king, Elara. Then — on May 18, 2009 — when LTTE supremo Prabhakaran was killed, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and younger brother Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa were hailed as conquerors of the LTTE. A new dawn had begun; Rajapaksas could do no wrong.

Power begets power. The Rajapaksas decided to change the geopolitics of the region at the cost of India and the West, befriending countries like Libya and North Korea and strengthening ties with Pakistan and, especially, China, the two countries that had helped with military hardware which India refused to supply. The war ended with allegations of war crimes against top military commanders and the Rajapaksa brothers. Later, a western plot in which India was associated dethroned the Rajapaksas who were replaced by a National Unity Government (NUG) led by a Rajapaksa acolyte, Maithripala Sirisena, and Wickremesinghe. The NUG was a disaster, crippled by the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019, which returned the Rajapaksa brothers — but Gotabaya as President and Mahinda as PM, with two-thirds majority to power.

The inexperienced Colonel-turned-President changed the rules of the game and ran a populist-authoritarian government with nearly two dozen task forces led by serving and retired military officers. The constitutional clock turned a full circle, making the executive — the President — super powerful again. Populist measures like tax cuts put immense pressure on the Covid-hit economy. A number of other missteps accelerated its decline. The hallmark of the Rajapaksa regimes was profligacy — spending beyond means and borrowing without thinking of paying back. It borrowed heavily from China and international agencies to amass a debt of $51 billion.

The economic meltdown started after the war when the 30-year conflict ended with huge human and monetary costs. For reconciliation with the Tamils in the North, Mahinda coined the slogan: Development; it replaced Devolution. Following decades of stagnation in the North, it grew in double digits. Mahinda pledged to make Sri Lanka the new Singapore: shipping and aviation hubs along one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. But the focus of development was in the south, the Rajapaksa homeland. Expressways, conference centres, Mattala international airport and Hambantota port were all built by Chinese companies with Chinese loans. Except, that a decade after becoming operational, these facilities are almost in disuse, fetching zero revenue.

Two years after winning the war, Gotabaya showcased the triumph as the defeat of the world’s deadliest terrorist organisation in the 21st century as a ‘humanitarian operation’ to rescue the Tamils. Only two other insurgencies had been subdued previously: the Malaya campaign and Khalistan movement. Gotabaya’s annual events of self-glorification made him ‘the Terminator’, though credit must be shared with then Army Commander, Lt-Gen Sarath Fonseka, now Sri Lanka’s only Field Marshal. But billboards across Sri Lanka carried pictures of only the Rajapaksa brothers. I have known Gotabaya during his term as Defence Secretary. He was affable and indulgent, but inscrutable.

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Colombo had produced a Rajapaksa family tree, including extended family which traced 17 members led by four brothers — Chamal, Mahinda, Gotabaya and Basil — who were in politics. The First Family was reported to have been controlling or linked to 78 per cent of Sri Lanka’s budget. Basil, the strategist, was later nicknamed ‘Mr Ten Percent’. Gotabaya, too, was alleged to have been involved in an offshore arms racket. But his lawyer (later Finance Minister Ali Sabry) secured an acquittal. Mahinda’s sons — Namal, a minister, and Yoshitha, his chief of staff — had given the Sri Lankan Navy many sleepless nights. Both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe are known to have helped the Rajapaksas in stalling corruption cases. In appointing Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister, protesters are accusing Gotabaya of payback.

A poll done by the CPA (April 19 to25), before government goons were unleashed on the protesters on May 9, reflected that 89.6 per cent wanted Mahinda to leave politics and resign, 87.3 per cent voted that Gotabaya should resign, 75 per cent wanted the Executive Presidency abolished and 85 per cent wanted all 225 MPs to resign. Public anger and disgust with the Rajapaksas is unprecedented and mounting. Such collective resentment by every section of society, none excluded, was unthinkable.

Galle Face Green is Colombo’s iconic square where grass does not grow. It is surrounded on three sides by five-star hotels, the old Parliament building, the bronze statue of former PM SWRD Bandaranaike and the Arabian Sea. A large Sri Lankan flag, installed after victory, is aflutter from dawn to dusk. All of Colombo descends on the GFG, but since April, it has been commandeered by ‘Gota Go Home’ protesters. They have forced Mahinda to resign. “One down, one to go” they say. Wickremesinghe has pledged to save the country, saying in a Churchillian rephrase that things will get far worse before they get any better.

The chances of a diminished Gota surviving till the next elections are little. The army, though fiercely loyal to the Rajapaksas, is unlikely to intervene as Gota’s days are numbered.