Lankan solution: Protesters’ patience & resilience

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Lankan solution: Protesters’ patience & resilience

Sunday, 10 April 2022 | Makhan Saikia

Lankan solution: Protesters’ patience & resilience

Citizens’ ire in the South Asian archipelago is directed towards the four Rajapaksa brothers who are occupying the key political positions in the island nation. Political polarisation to address the economic crisis may not help the commoners.

Of course, if the current Government falls, the Opposition would get a chance to come back to power. But then, the economic situation for now will remain the same

Sri Lanka, a nation of more than 22 million people, is in deep crisis as it is in dire need of basic materials for day-to-day survival. And the ruling Government of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) headed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is being held responsible for the crisis as it has miserably failed to manage the current situation in the country. Sri Lankans have completely lost the trust in the administration in Colombo.

Demonstrators are shouting at the Rajapaksas, demanding “Gota Out”, “Go Home Gota”. Citizens’ ire in the South Asian archipelago is directed towards the four brothers who are occupying the key political positions in the island nation. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa is the Prime Minister, Chamal Rajapaksa, a former Speaker and Minister, and Basil Rajapaksa, the Finance Minister. Apart from these “Big-4”, Namal Rajapaksa, the son of PM Mahinda, was serving as the Youth and Sports Minister in the present Government along with Shashindra, the son of Chamal, who was also a State Minister for Paddy and Cereals. Thus, nearly 40 people from the Rajapaksa family holding government posts, besides holding key portfolios. This indicates how the Rajapaksa clan is literally controlling the whole nation.

The present chaos in Sri Lanka initially started as an economic downturn. Gradually, it has turned into a major political crisis. The Rajapaksas are encountering a vehement public protest. Their long and powerful grip on power in the country is being openly challenged by street protests everyday.

The same people voted the Rajapaksas to power are now extremely annoyed with the dominance of one family in the country for a long period.

The roots of Rajapaksas lie in the politics of pre-independent Sri Lanka, when it was a British colony. The current Rajapaksas are third generation of the family in the politics of the island. Even before its independence in 1948, the Rajapaksa clan had started its foray into politics and administration of the country. Today, even the fourth-generation family politicians such as Namal and Shashindra have consolidated their position in the ruling clan. People are voting them to power successively despite having setbacks in the past. Frankly speaking, the Rajapaksa clan, mainly hailing from the southern district of Hambantota, had the strongest and the most powerful presence in politics when Mahinda Rajapaksa was the President of the country for two terms from 2005 to 2015.

During that time, his brother Gotabaya, the current President, was the Defence Secretary of the country. Both the brothers, along with the support of the Armed Forces, completely vanquished the three decades old terror group called Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE) from the country’s north and east region. Thus the majority Sinhalese community and the country as a whole heaved a sigh of relief in 2009 from a bloody terror outfit once led by dreaded militant Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The civil war led to the death of nearly 80,000 to 100000 people in the country. This invited the ire of various global human rights organisations and the top global governance body, the United Nations. Both the brothers were accused of massive human rights violations along with the country’s Army.

Afterwards, Mahinda lost power to the Opposition UNP backed candidate named Maithripala Sirisena, who ruled the country from 2015-2019. But the powerful and shrewd Rajapaksas rode on the image of war veterans and invoking stability (after the historic Easter terror bombings that rocked the island in April 2019). The junior Rajapaksa, Gotabaya, won the presidential poll against the Opposition candidate Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya in 2019. Known as the “Terminator” among the Rajapaksas, Gotabaya brought back the family clan into the heart of the country’s politics and afterwards, Mahinda became the Prime Minister in August 2020.

This has made the cycle complete. Now the two most important political offices are with the Rajapaksas. Besides, the junior Rajapaksas have joined the Government both as ministers and other powerful office-bearers in the administration of the country. It has probably been the golden moment for the Rajapaksas in the recent political history of the island since independence. But now they are facing the bitterest and intense fight for survival.

Today, solution to the crisis is not in the resignation of the Rajapaksa Government. At the moment, the Opposition parties in the country do not seem to be able to bring back normalcy. It’s wiser to back the Gotabaya regime for now. The reason is simple: The plunging economic situation should not be clubbed with an outcry for an anti-Rajapaksa campaign. It’s understood that the people are not happy with the family rule of the Rajapaksas. But that can be fought in the next presidential and parliamentary elections. This is not the right time to fight the government. It’s time for a collective effort both from the Government, the Opposition and the people to patiently look for an immediate solution. Thus, the call for a unity government by the President Gotabaya was a welcome development.

However, the Opposition parties completely rejected the offer. Clearly, it was a good opportunity, for all public representatives to sit together and chalk out an emergency plan to rescue the nation from this mess. The opportunity is lost.

This week the Sri Lankan rupee fell to the record low level. It’s now 310 against a US dollar. Shockingly, the buying and selling in the black market is reported to be about 400 Sri Lankan rupee against a US dollar. It’s an unimaginable situation for the ordinary people. As per the estimates of the economic experts, the value of the Sri Lankan rupees has been declining since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the year 2020. The global pandemic has severely squeezed the income of the commoners across the island nation.

But from the first week of March this year, the Sri Lankan rupee started plummeting to a historic low. On March 7, the Sri Lankan Central Bank devalued it from 200 to 230 against the US dollar with a view to allow greater flexibility in foreign exchange. Many analysts opine that Colombo has done it simply to obtain urgent help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the crisis was deepening and going beyond the control of the government. But all that the government was planning and doing could not prevent the current economic catastrophe.

The irony is that despite appeals from the Opposition and the experts, the Rajapaksa Government declined assistance from the IMF for months. And this has worsened the economic condition of the country and contributed to the fall of the foreign exchange reserves. By this February, the foreign exchange reserves were only $2.31 billion while the country has to roll out a payment of $ 4 billion to foreign debtors around this year.

In a nutshell, in Sri Lanka today, the expenditure has far exceeded the country’s income. So the crisis will continue until there is an immediate foreign aid simply to make the basic necessities, both food items and medicines, available to people. Further, Colombo has to sit back with international financial agencies such as the Asian Development Bank and the IMF to plan for a step-by-step bailout plan to save the nation. Alongside India, Japan and China which are already offering financial packages to Sri Lanka, foreign countries must be consulted so as to ease the burden on the ordinary people. But the road ahead for Lankans would be tough.

Political polarisation to address the economic crisis will not help the commoners. Of course, if the current Government falls, the Opposition would get a chance to come back to power. But then, the economic situation for now will be same. Even they will have to struggle to set the country to normalcy. It may so happen that people would again resort to street protests and violence to secure their future. Hence for now, it is wiser for all in Sri Lankans, including the Opposition leaders, to sit together and find out an urgent solution. Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa can certainly unite the rest of the Opposition parties, but only for finding a pragmatic solution to the present crisis, not to fight the Rajapaksa family rule at the moment. And, the people in general should maintain law and order so as to offer a helping hand to the Gotabaya regime to prevent the nation falling into an abyss. The people have all the right to show their anger in the next election against the Rajapaksas and the current ruling establishment. Time now is to display patience and resilience.

(Dr Makhan Saikia has taught political science and international relations for over a decade in institutions of national and international repute after specialisation in globalisation and governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is the chief editor of the Journal of Global Studies, an international research journal)

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