Bells toll for the Rajapaksas

If any compelling reason has to be found to ask the President to resign, the nation’s bankruptcy will do. Tuesday’s shock announcement by the Central Bank Governor that Lanka will renege on her international USD 51 billion and is bankrupt, hammered the last nail home and sealed the fate of the President and that of his Rajapaksa top heavy Government.

Though couched in economic jargon that the move was to preempt a hard default, it cannot conceal what in ordinary parlance simply means: that the nation is broke. Gone bust due to the reckless squander of its finances and gross economic mismanagement by a regime which, after turning Lanka into a failed state, has lost the right to govern.

Outside, within earshot of the Presidential Secretariat, thousands of people keep a nightand- day vigil demanding the President to resign. The spontaneously sprung protest movement, which began last Saturday at the Galle Face Green, shows no sign of ebbing but rather its rising tide seems to intensify hour by hour.

People Power has dug its heels on the Green for the eighth consecutive day; and neither the midnoon sun that scorches nor

If they had thought that the shining example set by Dudley Senanayake who, a year after being elected to office, resigned as Prime Minister in 1953 after soaring rice prices had plunged the Government’s popularity, would serve as a precedent for future leaders to follow, they have been proved much mistaken

the torrential rain that pours has either flayed their spirits or dampened their ardour as they continue to give gusty roar to their singular cry, ‘ Gota, go home.’

Elsewhere in the suburbs, in the cities, in towns, in grassroot villages, the mantra is the same. Bereft of gas, of fuel, of food and medicine, of electricity to light their homes, even of milk powder to feed their infants, the masses have been placed on life’s stoic rack and subjected to torture without end. One old man on his way to the queue summed it up succinctly when he told TV news: ‘In the morning we are in the polime, in the afternoon we are in hamathe, in the night we are in kaluware.’

The Government they had brought to office with much fanfare, has callously herded them to the brink of the cliff and shoved them over the precipice. Their mass disappointment with their 2019 saviours, who had promised them the sun, moon and stars, is now complete and final.

They no longer have the time or the inclination to indulge in the political blame game. That time is past. They want change, a real change in the leadership. No more can they place their faith in those who had rained ruin on the nation, and expect them to restore the country to the halcyon days they’d known before.

Those responsible for the debacle have forfeited the trust of the people, and not all their glib talk, not all their spin can win back shattered faith again. The people have made up their minds. The die is cast.

But though Bankrupt Lanka faces a USD 51 billion international debt, it has not desisted the Government’s flying white elephant -- which has already drained the Treasury of millions of dollars in losses to stay in the air -- from planning a new spending spree. While the people writhe in agony due to mass shortages, SriLankan Airlines announced on Thursday it has called for proposals to lease 21 aircraft to expand its fleet. Some are still on cloud nine, impervious to the reality of a grounded Lanka.

The Constitution spells out the state policy that shall guide the President and the Cabinet in the governance of Lanka. Though having no legal force but only of aspirational value, Article 27 pledges the state to establish a Society, one of the objectives of which is “the realisation by all citizens of an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families, including adequate food, clothing and housing.”

Forget the idealist vision of the State providing the people with adequate food and shelter. Today, the Government can barely provide the citizenry with the bare essentials. The official declaration this week of the State’s bankruptcy, under Rajapaksa watch, is the last straw.

If the framers of Sri Lanka’s constitution had failed to include a ‘ forfeiture of Presidential office due to gross failure of performance’ clause in its articles, it would have been solely due to the prospect of the nation going bust being too farfetched to contemplate. They would have thought that in the unlikely event of the unthinkable occurring, the penalty of resignation would be obvious. That long before the final buck stopped at the President’s table, the incumbent of that high office would have made his or her graceful exit.

If they had thought that the shining example set by Dudley Senanayake who, a year after being elected to office, resigned as Prime Minister in 1953 after soaring rice prices had plunged the Government’s popularity, would serve as a precedent for future leaders to follow, they have been proved much mistaken.

No Constitutional provision exists to force a President out of office except by bringing an impeachment motion against him in Parliament. But first the motion has to be based on one or more of the grounds specified under Article 38; and, secondly, it must be signed by not less than 150 MPs to be entertained by the Speaker with or without his blessings. Even before considering the third stage which deals with a Supreme Court inquiry and reports, it will be nigh impossible to obtain the requisite two- thirds majority when the Government still commands a comfortable 117 seats in the House.

Despite the solid evidence that he has forfeited the people’s mandate, now apparent to all but him, despite People Power’s loud roar sounding from Point Pedro to Dondra Head with the same reverberating ‘ Gota go home’ mantra, if President Gotabaya Rajapaksa still believes he has not lost the mandate to rule, he can test the validity of his belief by submitting it to the People by Referendum as a matter of national importance as provided in Article 86.

If he fails to take this constitutionally available litmus test, if he shrinks from submitting his claim to the mandate to the people’s will, it will only confirm his own worst fears that the nation demands that he must go. The hour’s come, the game’s up.

The magic that lay in the Rajapaksa name has disappeared. And the Genie has left the lamp. The stage lights are fast going out. The denouement-the final outcome of the tragedy--is tottering towards its long drawn end. And only the final curtain awaits its people- ordained fall.