Late Thursday night, a crowd roared into his tent. Had they succeeded? Rajapaksa, who had already left the country on Wednesday night, resigned. By Friday morning he was no longer officially president. “It was so emotional, I just screamed and cried,” Dias said. “For more than three months we have been living here, fighting for political change. Taking down Gotabaya is not the end of our struggle – we still have a lot to do to change this country – but it is a huge triumph.” An anti-government slogan written on a window near the House of the President who fled to Singapore via the Maldives after months of anti-government protests. Photo: Chamila Karunarathne/EPA The collapse of the regime of President Rajapaksa, once considered one of Asia’s most powerful strongmen, is unprecedented in Sri Lankan history. He is the first president to be killed mid-term by a mass uprising, and the scale and scope of the protests that toppled him – spanning religions and ethnicities – are unlike anything seen before in Sri Lanka, which remains strongly divided. along ethnic lines. Many see it as a defeat not just for the president, but for the entire Rajapaksa family, which has been the most powerful political dynasty in Sri Lanka for two decades. President Rajapaksa, along with his brother Mahinda, who was president between 2005 and 2015 and then prime minister in that regime, Basil, who was finance minister, and several other Rajapaksas who held cabinet and secretary positions, are accused collectively to bankrupt the country. concentration of power in their family ranks and then engaging in widespread corruption, economic mismanagement, militarization of government and divisive, racist politics. “The Rajapaksas were aggressive and corrupt, their regime has nothing to commend itself,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives. Protesters take selfies as they leave government buildings after military troops stepped up security at the parliament, July 14. Photo: Rafiq Maqbool/AP “They engaged in public spending and vanity projects like there was no tomorrow and brought in their extended family to run the government. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was not a politician. He had no experience in government and therefore had a very limited vision for the country. They became the epitome of a weakened system of governance.” The Rajapaksa reign began in 2005 when Mahinda, the most popular of the brothers, was elected president. He became a hero among the Sinhalese Buddhist majority for ending a three-decade civil war with Tamil separatists, but became a permanent enemy in the eyes of the Tamil minority for atrocities committed in the final stages of the war, where tens of thousands were killed and even more disappeared subsequently. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was defense minister and head of the armed forces, has been accused of war crimes and of personal involvement in the murders of journalists and the enforced disappearances and “white van abductions” of Tamil activists and opposition politicians. “The Rajapaskas’ legacy is one of crushing minorities, war crimes and crushing dissent as well as robbing the Sri Lankan people in broad daylight,” said Ruki Fernando, a human rights defender. It was during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime that widespread allegations of corruption began to emerge, linked to huge deals with foreign companies, leaving no one in the family unmoved. A confidential 2007 cable leaked to WikiLeaks from the US embassy in Colombo made special mention of younger brother Basil Rajapaksa, who “has no close advisers and more enemies than friends in Sri Lanka because he is in the habit of trying to ‘buy people”. . He earned the nickname “Mr. Ten percent’ for the ten percent commission requirement for each project’. Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the 2014 election, in part because of corruption allegations, but so strong has been the family’s continued influence in politics that all attempts to hold them accountable for corruption or war crimes have come to little. Mahinda Rajapaksa (left) and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa waving to supporters during a party conference held to announce Gotabaya’s 2019 presidential bid. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena/AP Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s November 2019 election victory came from a wave of Sinhalese majority Buddhist ultra-nationalism, which the Rajapaksa family was famous for cultivating. In April of that year, Sri Lanka had suffered terrorist attacks at the hands of Islamist suicide bombers, and the family played on nationalism and security fears, winning 6.9 million votes – a huge majority on an island of 22 million people. His brother Mahinda was appointed prime minister the following year. However, a series of critical mistakes – from drastic tax cuts, reckless lending, a botched fertilizer ban, catastrophic mismanagement of the country’s finances and accusations of continued widespread corruption by the family – have led Sri Lanka to face its worst economic crisis since then. independence; and it was what would prove to be the undoing of the Rajapaskas. The majority of those who took to the streets in April, initially to protest fuel and food shortages, were the Sinhalese Buddhist community who had voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa. However, as the protests grew, many described a political awakening taking place in the country. Protesters moved beyond calling for Rajapaksa to step down and instead began calling for an end to the divisive, ultra-nationalist politics they had supported for so long, as well as specific changes to the constitution, including the abolition of the executive presidency altogether. “We are working to change a whole system, for political, social, economic, spiritual change and it is not over,” said Catholic priest Jeevantha Peiris, one of the prominent clergy who took part in the protests. “In the last three months we have been through tear gas attacks, surveillance, travel bans, death threats, some of our friends are in prison. But this is the first time in the history of Sri Lanka that all these different groups have been able to converse together and that has been beautiful.” Many of those camped at Galle Face Green say they will continue to stay in their tents even though Gotabaya Rajapaksa has resigned, as the work of holding the rest of their politicians to account has not stopped. A new president is due to be chosen by MPs on July 20 and there is already controversy over the potential candidates to be nominated. Emboldened by the overthrow of a powerful president, many in the movement now have their hopes set on building a very different future for Sri Lanka. “The deep-rooted problem in Sri Lanka goes beyond the Rajapaksas,” said Umeshi Rajeendra, artistic director of a dance group in Colombo. “Gotabaya’s resignation has not resolved the systematic oppression, militarization, economic crisis and Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. His resignation is the first of many steps toward honest reflection, accountability and, hopefully, deep-seated change.”
