Rajapaksa returns to Colombo amid calls for him to ‘face justice’
FORMER SRI LANKA PRESIDENT AND HIS FAMILY MAY BE PLOTTING A COMEBACK, SAY EXPERTS
SRI LANKA’S ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was last Saturday (3) given an official residence and security by the government after he returned to the country he had fled in July during economic unrest, two senior officials said.
Rajapaksa, 73, fled in the early hours of July 13 under military escort after massive protests engulfed the capital Colombo. Demonstrators, enraged with the economic devastation, stormed his official residence and office.
He resigned after arriving in Singapore and later travelled to Thailand.
A Sri Lanka government spokesman and the president’s office did not immediately reply to emails seeking comment on Rajapaksa’s return.
The former president was garlanded with flowers by ministers and senior politicians after disembarking from his flight in Colombo early last Saturday, before being whisked off to the residence allocated by the government.
A senior official said Rajapaksa has not indicated his plans.
“What he told us last night was he needs some time as he wasn’t even allowed to step out of his room due to security reasons,” one official said, adding Rajapaksa had not been allowed to go to the gym.
“Once he has spent some time at home, he will let us know what he wants to do,” the official, who asked not to be named, added.
The leaders of the protest campaign that toppled his government said Rajapaksa, who lost his presidential immunity after leaving office, should now be brought to justice.
“Gotabaya returned because no country is willing to accept him, he has no place to hide,” said Joseph Stalin, the leader of a teachers’ trade union that helped mobilise demonstrators.
“He should be arrested immediately for causing such misery for the 22 million people of Sri Lanka. He can’t live freely as if nothing has happened.”
Sri Lanka’s main opposition alliance, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), has yet to comment on Rajapaksa’s return, but a former minister said the ousted leader needed to be prosecuted.
“Gotabaya must be held to account for his crimes before and during his presidency,” Ajith Perera said in Colombo.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa’s successor, depends on the latter’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party to govern. Last Friday (2), ministers passed an austerity budget – a precondition for an International Monetary Fund bailout –with the grouping’s support.
“Gotabaya’s return demonstrates that the SLPP is still powerful despite the humiliation they suffered,” said Hasith Kandaudahewa, a senior lecturer on international relations at the University of Colombo.
Rajapaksa began receiving guests at his new home last Saturday, with his elder brother – former president Mahinda Rajapaksa – one of the first to call on him, witnesses said. Mahinda was serving as premier in his brother’s administration when he was chased from his home by a mob responding to an attack on protesters by government loyalists.
Akhil Bery, an Asia Society Policy Institute director, said the powerful family, which has dominated Sri Lankan politics for much of the past two decades, could be plotting a comeback.
Their allies “might be betting that the unpopular decisions Ranil has had to take will lay the groundwork for the Rajapaksas’ return”, the analyst said.
Rights activists have vowed to press for Rajapaksa’s prosecution on a litany of charges, including his alleged role in the 2009 assassination of prominent newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
“We welcome his decision to return so we can bring him to justice for the crimes he has committed,” Tharindu Jayawardhana, a spokesman for the Sri Lanka Young Journalists’ Association, said last Friday (2).
Several corruption cases lodged against Rajapaksa stalled after he was elected president. He also faces charges in a US court over Wickrematunge’s murder and the torture of Tamil prisoners at the end of the island’s traumatic civil war in 2009.
Rajapaksa won a landslide election in 2019 after promising “vistas of prosperity and splendour”, but saw his popularity nosedive as the country’s crisis worsened.
His government was accused of introducing tax cuts that drove up debt and exacerbated the country’s economic problems on top of the pandemic.