Even as the rest of South Asia is at a loss to fully comprehend a ‘peaceful people’s struggle’ (Aragalaya in Sinhala) overthrowing the ‘all-powerful and autocratic’ (?) Rajapaksas, historians on contemporary Sri Lanka, would record that it was also ‘regime change by another name.’
The term, ‘Regime change’ was originally coined by pro-Rajapaksa groups at the height of the 2015 presidential poll. This one also contrasted with two previous ‘people’s struggles’ transformed into militant insurgency of the left-leaning JVP kind in 1972 and 1987-89, put down with equal military force. The military-minded regime of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not know how to put down what was projected as a non-violent struggle. The result: he had to put his head on the altar along with those of his clan members in public life, and quit as unceremoniously as his arrival was celebrated less than three years back.
So complete was the confusion that the Government did not know how to react when a section of the protestors set fire to the homes of 78 ruling SLPP leaders across southern Sri Lanka in less than two hours, through a well-coordinated plot on 9 May. Nor did they have an action plan, including adroit media-management, when two months later, similar sections occupied the President’s Secretariat and residence and also the Prime Minister’s office, apart from setting fire to the private home of then PM Wickremesinghe, .
GOTA’S MISADVENTURE
At the end of the day, the pent-up anguish and anger of the urban elite of capital Colombo had merged and mingled at Colombo’s beach-front; the more immediate food and income-loss of the rural masses cost the Rajapaksas dearly. The clan was criticised for economic mismanagement than alleged human rights violations in their earlier rule.
Sri Lanka had contributed its share to the economy-centric legacy, issues from the early decades of Independence in 1948. But Gota’s inexperience bordering on impertinent imprudence, showed up when he side-stepped popular elder brother and Prime Minister Mahinda and ordered overnight, without preparation, ‘organic-only farming.’ This starved the rural population, Mahinda’s traditional constituency; this was already suffering months of Covid lockdown(s), that caused humungous loss of tourism earnings and internal remittances from those working the factories and family kitchens, overseas. Along the line, a left-leaning ex-militant breakaway group, the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), hijacked the mass movement near-completely through its strong trade union and university students’ union networks.
AWAITING IMF BAIL-OUT
Today, the Rajapaksa regime is gone, but Mahinda in particular, continues to ‘rule,’ with Ranil Wickremesinghe, now elected President, courtesy SLPP’s parliamentary majority. The new President is set to re-commence negotiations for an IMF bail-out package from where he had left as Prime Minister and Finance Minister under Gotabay.
The bail-out is even more important as the developed West has linked its contributions to rescheduling the unexceptionally high ‘defaulted’ external debt of $ 51-billion. All of it would be tested on the altar of human rights, where Wickremesinghe too would be hauled up for ordering the security forces to clear the protestors from the President’s Secretariat in the vicinity, and also for chiding western diplomats in an invited meeting, asking what their governments would have done in a similar situation.
As Wickremesinghe reiterated as Prime Minister, India was the ‘lone nation’ to rush food, fuel and pharma aid, repeatedly over the past months. Indian investors, both public sector and private sector (Adani Group) had signed energy generation/storage agreements in the past months. More such investments would be required to generate jobs and family incomes that Sri Lanka’s decade-long honeymoon with China did not create.
The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and commentator.
Reach him at Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com
