How ‘the Terminator’ lost power
EX-PRESIDENT’S TENURE WAS MARKED BY POLICY U-TURNS AND LACK OF POLITICAL ACUMEN
KNOWN as “the Terminator” to family and foes alike for his ruthless crushing of Tamil rebels to end a decades-long civil war, when Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa ended his own presidency he did it from a safe haven.
His no-holds-barred military offensives once drove thousands to seek asylum abroad, but last Thursday (14) the 73-year-old emailed in his resignation from Singapore. Rajapaksa, one of four brothers who have dominated the country’s politics in recent years, was defence secretary under his brother Mahinda’s presidency from 2005 to 2015.
He has denied allegations that at least 40,000 minority Tamil civilians were killed by troops under his command during the closing months of the war.
He was also considered the architect of “white van” abductions under Mahinda, when dissidents and journalists were abducted in ubiquitous white vans and disappeared. But the accusations bolstered his tough-guy image in the eyes of some in the majority Sinhalese community, who offered him their overwhelming support in the 2019 elections.
For Sri Lanka’s influential Buddhist clergy he was the reincarnation of Sinhalese warrior king Dutugemunu the Great, who is known for vanquishing a Tamil ruler. Dutugemunu reigned for 24 years, but Rajapaksa submitted his resignation fewer than three years into his rule – the first leader to resign since the south Asian nation adopted an executive presidential system in 1978.
It came five days after his presidency crumbled, when tens of thousands of protesters overran his official residence, and a day after he left his country for the neighbouring Maldives.
That hasty exit followed months of demonstrations demanding his resignation over the country’s worst-ever economic crisis, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic but exacerbated by mismanagement. The former soldier marketed his lack of political expertise as a virtue, but Tamil legislator Dharmalingam Sithadthan said what Rajapaksa projected as his strength was actually the opposite. “His lack of political knowledge showed in the way he worked,” Sithadthan said.
“He flip-flopped from one crisis to another. Every time I met with him, he would say he is focused on the economy and lawand-order, but he failed in both.”
Rajapaksa came to power on a manifesto promising “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour”. According to the United Nations, the country now desperately needs humanitarian aid.
The coronavirus pandemic hammered tourism and overseas remittances – both mainstays of the economy – leaving it facing a foreign exchange crisis.
The country’s 22 million people have been enduring acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines since late last year, and poverty is spreading. Lengthy power cuts – attributable to a lack of dollars to pay for fuel – have exacerbated people’s suffering.
When he took over in November 2019, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves were at $7.5 billion (£6.24bn) but dropped to just “one million dollars” recently, according to prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Under Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in April. It declared bankruptcy and inflation soared in June.
The once prosperous country recorded its worst-ever recession in 2020, as the economy contracted 3.6 per cent, and it is expected to shrink seven percent this year.
“This pariah stole our future,” shouted former legislator Hirunika Premachandra at a recent demonstration outside Rajapaksa’s home. “Gota is a pariah. We must get rid of him.”
Rajapaksa’s tenure was marked by policy U-turns. Critics say he revoked more than 100 government decrees, earning him the moniker “Gazette Reverse”.
He abandoned the democratic reforms of the previous administration and made the presidency more powerful, but in the final months of his tenure agreed to return those powers to parliament. Soon after coming to power he drastically cut taxes to win over his financial backers, a move partly blamed for Sri Lanka’s dire economic crisis. Those taxes are now being raised.
Arguably his biggest policy blunder was the banning of agrochemicals in April last year. He reversed the ban six months later, but by then more than half of the country’s crops had failed.
The government promised, but failed to compensate millions of farmers affected under Rajapaksa’s disastrous drive to become the world’s first 100 per cent organic farming nation.
As shortages of food and fuel gripped the country and prices soared, cities and towns across the island were dotted with protests calling on him to go.
During the pandemic, his refusal to allow Muslims to bury their Covid-19 dead according to Islamic rites and instead forcing cremations drew condemnation from the Islamic world as well as from rights groups.
Buddhist monks welcomed his stubborn refusal to allow Muslim burials, but the tables turned quickly: a year later, a shortage of gas forced Buddhists to bury their dead over their preferred cremations. #GotaGoHome become a trending hash-tag on social media towards the end of his reign. After overrunning his official residence last Saturday (16), activists hung Rajapaksa’s effigy in a symbolic gesture of what they wanted to do to him.