Sri Lankan power family falls from grace as economy tanks
NEW DELHI >> With one brother president, another prime minister and three more family members cabinet ministers, it appeared that the Rajapaksa clan had consolidated its grip on power in Sri Lanka after decades in and out of government.
But as a national debt crisis spirals out of control, with pandemic woes and rising food and fuel costs due to the war in Ukraine compounding problems from years of dubious economic decisions, their dynasty is crumbling.
The three Rajapaksas resigned their cabinet posts in April, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down on Monday, angry protesters attacked the family's home this week and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has not been seen outside his heavily guarded compound.
But the family is not going down without a fight, ordering troops to shoot protesters causing injury to people or property, instituting a nationwide curfew and allegedly encouraging mobs of their supporters to fight in the streets with anti-government demonstrators.
In his first speech to the nation in some two months, Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday said he would return more power to Parliament — by rolling back an amendment he implemented to buttress the allpowerful executive presidential system. On Thursday
he appointed a new prime minister — of no relation.
But it might be too little, too late to put an end to the nationwide protests calling for the ouster of the president, the last Rajapaksa still clinging to national office.
“This is a crisis very much of his making. He did not create the crisis from the beginning, but the Rajapaksas have come to epitomize the failings in our structure of government with their nepotism, their corruption and their human rights violations,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives think tank in Colombo.
With soaring prices, fuel and food shortages and lengthy power cuts, Sri Lankans have been protesting for weeks, calling for both the Rajapaksas to step down. Violence erupted Monday after Rajapaksa supporters clashed with protesters in a dramatic turn that saw Mahinda resign. Nine people
were killed and more than 200 injured.
Angry protesters attacked the family's ancestral home in the Hambantota area, and Mahinda has been forced to take refuge on a heavily fortified naval base.
With his atypically conciliatory speech Wednesday, it is clear Gotabaya has been “badly shaken by the protests,” said Dayan Jayatilleka, a former diplomat who served as Sri Lanka's representative to the United Nations during Mahinda Rajapaksa's presidency.
Still, it may be too early to count him out, Jayatilleka said, noting that Gotabaya had changed tack to sound “flexible and pragmatic.”
“Gotabaya has a dualistic personality — one side of that personality that the country has seen is this unilateralist, quite insensitive ex-military man,” Jayatilleka said. “But there's another side — somewhat more rational. But the more rational side was on a very long vacation.”