NEW DELHI: Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is likely to return to Sri Lanka by the first week of September. Gotabaya has reportedly said the hotel room where he has been staying in Bangkok is like a “prison”.
He is said to have told his aides that he will return to Sri Lanka in September and possibly go to his wife’s Pangiriwatte house. He has been staying in his hotel room in Bangkok due to security reasons.
The former Lankan president is allowed to stay in Thailand until November. Thailand’s PM Prayut Chan-o-cha had granted a temporary visa to the 73-year-old on humanitarian grounds and on the condition that Gotabaya would not indulge in political activities during his stay there.
Gotabaya, who had to give up his US citizenship when he came to power, had tried hard to get a US visa when he was trying to flee Sri Lanka. Since that didn’t come through, he first went to Male and then to Singapore, before landing in Thailand.
Sources say that Gotabaya is continuing his efforts to get a US Green Card as his wife is a US national. However, it hasn’t come through yet. Gotabaya’s cousin and former bureaucrat Udayanga Weeratunga recently said that he had spoken to Gotabaya. Weeratunga was Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Russia from 2006-15. Weeratunga was arrested in February this year and released on bail in connection with the embezzlement of funds running in millions of dollars on the procurement of MiG 27 fighter jets from Ukraine in 2006.