PM Rajapaksa quits as violence rages
PM Rajapaksa quits as violence rages
sri lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned on Monday afternoon after his supporters attacked peaceful anti-government protesters and set fire to their camps outside the presidential secretariat in the capital Colombo. Five people, including a ruling party parliamentarian, were killed in clashes across the country.
sources said former minister and speaker Karu Jayasuriya is tipped to lead a unity government.
The prime minister handed in his resignation to his younger brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as civilians took to the streets defying an islandwide curfew and lashing back at Rajapaksa supporters who attacked them with sticks and poles.
Though Rajapaksa’s spokesman Rohan weliwita told KHALEEJ TIMES on Monday night that the prime minister was still unaware of the outcome, a gazette notification later in the night confirmed the resignation.
The 76-year-old strongman, who had previously been president for 10 years, said in the letter that he is resigning “with immediate effect so that you will be able to appoint an all-party gov
ernment to guide the country out of the current economic crisis”.
however, opposition leaders told KHALEEJ TIMES that until the resignation is accepted, “we will never know”.
Opposition leader sajith Premadasa called the unleashing of violence by the Rajapaksa supporters “political terrorism”.
Violence continued to escalate through the night even after the announcement of Rajapaksa’s resignation. shots were fired from inside the prime minister’s Temple Trees residence when hundreds of angry men and women tried to break through the barricades. Rajapaksa’s home in Kurunegala, some 100km from capital Colombo, was set ablaze by mobs.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has dominated Sri Lankan politics for nearly 20 years and whose government crushed the Tamil Tigers to bring an end to a long civil war, resigned as prime minister on Monday after intensifying anti-government protests.
In a statement, his office said he was quitting in order to help form an interim, unity government, following weeks of sometimes violent protests across the country over shortages of fuel and other vital imports and spiraling prices.
A charismatic and gregarious leader who often ruled in partnership with his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 76-year-old Mahinda is a member of and popular with the country’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
But his government, as were the Tigers, was accused of war crimes during the 26-year conflict. His critics also accuse him of nepotism and failing to prevent the abduction, torture and murder of government critics. He strenuously denied all charges. Born into an affluent family active in local politics in the southern district of Hambantota, Mahinda trained as a lawyer before becoming Sri Lanka’s youngest legislator when he entered parliament in 1970.
He first became prime minister in 2004 and then narrowly won his first term as president a year later when Sri Lanka was in the middle of a fragile ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, one of the world’s most violent guerrilla groups which was fighting for an independent state in the north.
Peace talks yielded nothing and in 2006, Mahinda turned to Gotabaya, a retired infantry officer whom he had made defence secretary, to draw up a plan to defeat the Tigers once and for all.
The Tigers eventually conceded defeat in 2009 following a ferocious government offensive in which the United Nations has estimated as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final few months of the war alone. The government said the rebels kept thousands of civilians as human shields, exacerbating the death toll.
The United Nations believes up to 100,000 people were killed over the duration of the conflict and in 2021, its Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that gave the human rights chief’s office new staff, powers and a $2.8 million budget to look at Sri Lanka’s war with a view to future prosecutions.
After the war ended, Mahinda’s popularity soared and he won a landslide re-election in 2010, promising to heal the country’s deep divisions.
His second term saw his party win a two-thirds majority in parliament, allowing him to remove some checks on presidential power, including term limits.
Mahinda also drew Sri Lanka closer to China, inviting heavy investment to the ire of traditional ally India, which fears that its neighbour could become a Chinese military outpost.
Surprisingly, he lost the 2015 presidential election to a former cabinet colleague who turned against him. But in 2019, coordinated suicide bombings by Islamist militants that killed more than 250 people saw Gotabaya Rajapaksa sweep into power on a platform of national security. In August 2020, the government increased its majority to two-thirds in parliament, allowing the Rajapaksas once again to repeal laws limiting presidential power. Gotabaya reappointed his brother as prime minister and, as Mahinda did before him, put other relatives into ministerial roles, once again cementing the family as one of the most dominant in the country’s post-independence history. —reuters
Kurunegala is Rajapaksa’s electorate and the district with the largest number of his supporters, who have backed the man who defeated the Tamil Tiger rebel group in 2009.
Monday’s protests also saw the first deaths in the months-long peaceful protests. A legislator from the ruling party, Amarakeerthi Athukorala, opened fire on protesters blocking his vehicle, shooting dead one man and critically injuring another two. Police said that he later shot himself and was found dead, when mobs surrounded the building he tried to take refuge in.
Public frustration has been rising in the past two months as Sri Lanka faces unprecedented economic turmoil since its independence in 1948.
The crisis is partly caused by a shortage of foreign currency and what the public blames as mismanagement and “stealing” of funds by the Rajapaksas. Sri Lankans have been battling months of blackouts, a severe shortage of staple food, medication and fuel, leading to kilometres-long queues around the island.
“We are hungry. My children are hungry. My mother is dying without her insulin because we can’t afford to buy anything anymore. And now they set these thugs on us. We are not afraid anymore. Enough now. We will fight back,” said 46-year-old Mangalika Premaratne, a daily wage earner, who stepped out to join the growing anti-rajapaksa crowds on the streets defying the curfew.
The hitherto peaceful protesters turned into violent mobs, attacking their persecutors and the vehicles they were travelling in. A bus that transported the Rajapaksa supporters was set aflame in the centre of the city. A swell of anti-government protesters stripped and dunked their attackers in the Bera Lake in Colombo.
Anti-government protesters also took to the highway leading to the country’s main airport, checking vehicles for fleeing Rajapaksa supporters. According to social media reports, the prime minister’s family, including his eldest son Namal Rajapaksa, who is also the minister of Youth and Sports, fled the country today.
“The entire country knows Mahinda Rajapaksa paid these people to create chaos and attack the Gota Go Gama (Gota Go Village), which has become a symbol of our unity and struggle,” said Mihin Ratnayake, a 31-year-old accountant who left his office by mid-day to defend what he called “my future”.
Prior to the attacks, Rajapaksa addressed around 3,000 of his supporters, promising to safeguard the “interest of the nation”.
A National Hospital source in Colombo told Khaleej Times that at least 200 people were admitted with injuries following the clashes in the afternoon.