On July 9, Sri Lankan protesters stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's residence and nearby office. (Photo | AP)
On July 9, Sri Lankan protesters stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's residence and nearby office. (Photo | AP)

People’s power purges Lanka of Rajapaksas

Lanka needs massive international financial aid but its second-biggest creditors, Japan and China, are cagey.

The fleeing of Gotabaya Rajapaksa ahead of protesters storming the Presidential palace in Colombo finally brought the curtain down on the notorious rule of his powerful clan. From a war hero who pulled the teardrop-shaped nation out of a bleeding decades-long ethnic conflict and put it on the road to peace, his fall from grace was total. That he remained in denial about the colossal human cost the nation paid for ending the war against the LTTE, as thousands of innocent civilian Tamils were slaughtered during its last days under his watch as defence minister, was already a blot on his career.

Yet, voters gave him a second chance following the Easter Sunday terror attacks on churches in 2019 based on his robust national security track record. But economic mismanagement coupled with the clan’s corruption, the crippling Chinese debt burden and the suicidal policy of ban on chemical fertilizers amid the pandemic eroded foreign currency reserves, took food out of the shelves, made fuel scarce and reduced the nation to a basket case.

Gotabaya’s brother and prime minister Mahinda fled under similar circumstances a couple of months ago after his instigation of party goons to use force to end popular protests went horribly wrong. Gotabaya then ran Sri Lanka by proxy to deflect public anger by installing the weakest opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe as prime minister. Amid Saturday’s uprising, Ranil offered to resign but that could not avert an arson attack on his private residence at Colombo. With protesters achieving their objective of smoking out the Rajapaksas, they ought to restore order by peacefully going back home.

Lanka needs massive international financial aid but its second-biggest creditors, Japan and China, are cagey. Global institutional funds come with loads of strings. India alone is consistently extending humanitarian support with lines of credit for food and fuel, but they are at best band-aids for a haemorrhaging economy. Going forward, an all-party government appears to be in the works. The agitators must know that there is no magic wand to end the crisis. The process to put money back into people’s pockets would be long and hard, requiring sacrifices. There are no quick fixes.

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The New Indian Express
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