State of emergency declared as protesters reject premier Ranil Wickremesinghe acting as president and demand he and Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign
PM Wickremesinghe has declared a state of emergency as protesters breached the prime minister’s offices and took over the state television broadcaster. The acting PM gave orders for police and military to do what was necessary to maintain order.
Reuters/The Guardian snap
Protests erupted in Sri Lanka on Wednesday after the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled to the Maldives on a military jet – but neither he nor the prime minster officially resigned, throwing the country into political chaos.
After Gotabaya’s clandestine departure, a Sri Lankan official said that the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, had been appointed by Rajapaksa to be acting president.
New Delhi
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country early on Wednesday, July 13.
The President, his wife and two bodyguards left aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for the city of Male, the capital of the Maldives.
Though Rajapaksa had agreed to step down under pressure and large scale unprecedented protest, Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Speaker is yet to receive the President’s resignation letter.
Sri Lanka’s main opposition party will nominate its leader, Sajith Premadasa, as the country’s next president when elections are held in parliament on July 20.
Meanwhile, Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka "categorically denied baseless and speculative media reports" that India facilitated the reported travel of Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of Sri Lanka.
"It is reiterated that India will continue to support the people of Sri Lanka....as they seek to realize their aspirations for prosperity and progress through democratic means and values , established democratic institutions and constitutional framework," the High Commission in Colombo said in a series of tweets.
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| Reuters/The Guardian snap |
Sri Lanka crisis deepens: People storm into President's House, PM Resi. ::: Speaker Mahinda Yapa urges public to respect the law
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President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has decided to quit. Rajapaksa, a hero of the quarter-century civil war against Tamil rebels, plans to resign on Wednesday, the Speaker announced.
Protesters stormed the president's official residence in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, after clashing with police and breaking through barriers.
Tens of thousands of people had gathered to demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa step down as the country continues to struggle through its worst economic crisis since independence.
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His “decision to step down on 13th July was taken to ensure a peaceful handover of power,” Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said in a video statement on Saturday. “I therefore request the public to respect the law and maintain peace.”
Some protesters took selfies of the polished interiors, a striking contrast to the misery many have endured. The nation of 22 million people is short of food and fuel, and inflation hit a record 54.6 per cent in June.
Thousands had descended on the seaside city demanding Rajapaksa resign after months of mismanaging the crisis, a dramatic escalation of largely peaceful anti-government protests on the island that sits near key shipping lanes.
Calm returned to the streets of Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo on Sunday and protesters were jubilant as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign after his house was stormed amid outrage over the South Asia nation’s collapsing economy.
Protesters, many wrapped in the Sri Lanka flag, swarmed into his whitewashed colonial-era residence on Saturday, jumped into the swimming pool and sat on a four-poster bed. Others set fire to the private home of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also agreed to resign to make way for an all-party government.
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis developed after the Covid-19 pandemic hammered the tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from overseas workers.
It has been compounded by large and growing government debt, rising oil prices and a ban on importing chemical fertilisers last year that devastated agriculture. The fertiliser ban was reversed in November.
Wickremesinghe, a six-time premier also seen as part of an uncaring ruling elite, agreed to step down, his office said. Local news channels showed a huge fire and smoke coming from his home in an affluent Colombo suburb.
Neither Rajapaksa nor Wickremesinghe were in their residences when the buildings were attacked.
Rajapaksa had left on Friday as a precaution before the planned demonstration, two defence ministry sources said.
Time: article
- by Ian Bremmer, a foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at TIME.
Many middle-income and developing countries are now suffering from a combination of internal political dysfunction and external economic shocks generated mainly by COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.
Sri Lanka provides a powerful example and a warning for countries in other regions that will face similar predicaments.
Sri Lanka is not a poor country. When adjusted for purchasing power, per capita GDP in this nation of 22 million people is higher than in South Africa, Peru, Egypt, or Indonesia. But the country now faces a political crisis powered by severe shortages of food, fuel, electricity, and medicine.
The currency is collapsing, and the government can’t afford imports or to make its debt payments.
At times in recent weeks, violent protests have threatened to spiral out of control.
How did we get here?
A quarter century of civil war, which ended in 2009, has created a legacy of violence at the heart of Sri Lanka’s politics. In 2019, a terrorist attack by an ISIS-inspired Islamist group on minority Christians made international headlines.
On Easter Sunday, a series of bombs detonated in churches and hotels killed and injured hundreds of people.
Those attacks, and the sense of insecurity they created across the island nation helped elect Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former defense minister with a reputation for toughness, later that year.
Gota, as the president is widely known, then named his older brother, Mahinda, a former president, as prime minister.
A landslide election victory in 2020 gave the Rajapaksas a two-thirds parliamentary majority, which then allowed them to rewrite Sri Lanka’s constitution to give the president extraordinary new powers.
Then hubris kicked in. Family and friends were given important posts in government. A series of economic mistakes, including populist tax cuts, deprived the government of revenue and made it much harder to borrow money abroad.
External shocks have also played a big role in Sri Lanka’s troubles. COVID-19 devastated a tourism sector still reeling from terrorism, a sector that’s critical for government revenue and job creation in the country.
The pandemic also cut deeply into remittances, money sent home by Sri Lankans working abroad.
The increasingly unpopular Rajapaksas refused to accept the need for government spending cuts and tax increases to help Sri Lanka avoid even tougher economic conditions.
A ban on chemical fertilizers to push farmers toward organic farming in the middle of the economic crisis made matters worse for the country’s food supply.
Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the damage it is now inflicting on global food and fuel prices.
Russia and Ukraine are both leading exporters of grain, and the war has shut in much of that production.
Russia and its ally Belarus, which also faces Western sanctions for allowing Russia to use his country’s territory as a launchpad for attacks on Ukraine, are leading producers of fertilizer.
Higher prices for fuel are the natural result of supply worries that have pushed oil above $100 per barrel. Sri Lanka also imports more than 80 percent of its medical supplies. Donors in India and in Europe have helped, but there’s a limit to how much they are willing to do.
In Sri Lanka, public anger came to a head in early May. Economic pressures exacerbated infighting within the Rajapaksa family, particularly between the president and prime minister.
After the government appeared to send counter-protesters to attack the mainly peaceful crowds that called for the prime minister to resign, bloodshed ensued.
Enraged anti-government protesters then went on an arson spree, attacking the homes of Rajapaksa family allies, and threatening the prime minister’s own residence.
The PM was forced to step down, and he needed the protection of security forces for a 4 AM evacuation of his home.
A state of emergency was declared across the county. Angry mobs have launched more attacks on politicians and their homes. Hundreds have been injured in recent weeks, and some have died. A member of parliament was killed in his car.
Two more of President Rajapaksa’s siblings and a nephew have resigned their cabinet posts.
Late last month, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time in the nation’s history.
What now?
President Rajapaksa, struggling to survive politically, has pledged to reverse some of the constitutional changes that gave him more power. He has accepted help for Sri Lanka’s economy from India and China, and he’s appealed to the IMF for a bailout.
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| The Week: Snap |
New Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesing, a political veteran, has been brutally honest in his public comments on the scale of the problems Sri Lanka faces and the need for bold action to solve them.
He has said Sri Lanka will raise tax rates to earn a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. He then used a televised speech to call on protest groups to join in the process of reform.
He pledged that parliamentary committees will allow lawmakers, young people and experts to work together.
For now, the protesters continue to demand President Rajapaksa’s resignation, though there don’t appear to be enough votes in parliament to impeach him, and the opposition looks to have little interest in sharing responsibility for cleaning up this mess by joining a government of national unity.
In short, a chastened Sri Lankan government will try to muddle through, hope the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine end soon, and do its best to secure long-term financial health.
It’s a pattern that will be repeated in many developing countries in coming years.
Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence on Saturday shortly before protesters, angered by an unprecedented economic crisis, overran the compound and stormed his nearby office.
Thousands of people had surrounded the leader’s home to demand his resignation, blaming government mismanagement for a downturn that has subjected the island nation’s 22 million people to months of bitter hardship.
As the crowd surged at the gates of the presidential palace, troops guarding the compound fired in the air to hold them back until Rajapaksa was safely removed.
“The president was escorted to safety,” a top defence source told AFP on condition of anonymity. “He is still the president, he is being protected by a military unit.”
Footage broadcast live on social media showed hundreds of people walking through the palace, with some among the boisterous crowd jumping into the compound’s pool for a swim.
Others were seen laughing and lounging in the stately bedrooms of the residence. The colonial-era state mansion is one of Sri Lanka’s key symbols of state power and officials said Rajapaksa’s departure raised questions as to whether he intended to remain in office.
“We are awaiting instructions,” a top civil servant told AFP. “We still don’t know where he is, but we know he is with the Sri Lanka navy and is safe.”
The Guardian article :
The Guardian view on Sri Lanka: good riddance to the Rajapaksas
Editorial
For years, long before his election to Sri Lanka’s presidency, Gotabaya Rajapaksa inspired fear. His own family nicknamed him “the terminator”, but his reputation for ruthlessness extended beyond politics.
As defence secretary during his brother Mahinda’s presidency, from 2005 to 2015, he oversaw the defeat of the Tamil Tigers; an estimated 40,000 Tamils died and there were numerous documented cases of unlawful killings and forced disappearances. Human Rights Watch alleges that he is implicated in war crimes. As president, he oversaw a sharp deterioration in human rights.
Now the jubilant scenes of protesters plunging into his swimming pool and rifling through drawers of underwear as they stormed the presidential palace last weekend have shown that anger has driven out the fear.
The Rajapaksa family ruled for too long, and primarily, in the eyes of many Sri Lankans, for themselves. (Basil Rajapaksa, another brother, resigned as finance minister in April.)
The president has promised to quit on Wednesday.
Even an attempt to leave the country first – which would mean he is outside its borders when he loses presidential immunity – was foiled when immigration officers blocked him at the airport. The military has shown little interest in defending him.
The protests over Sri Lanka’s devastating economic crisis, the worst since it gained its independence in 1948, began in March and were reinvigorated by activists last month. A quarter of the population do not know where their next meal is coming from, World Food Programme officials say.
In June, food inflation stood at over 80% year on year. The prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe (who has also pledged to resign), told parliament baldly that the economy had “completely collapsed”. He has warned that the country could run out of rice by September.
Things will only get worse, since many farmers did not plant crops because they could not afford seed or fertiliser.
Covid devastated the economy, further hitting a tourist trade already badly damaged by 2019’s Easter bombings, which killed 269 people following disastrous police and intelligence failures.
The crisis was worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; in addition to the effect on fuel costs, the two countries were major sources of tourists. But underlying all this was the Rajapaksas’ disastrous mismanagement over the years, ranging from white-elephant infrastructure projects to last year’s abrupt decision to ban fertilisers, causing harvests to slump.
Its position in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes has ensured it plenty of friends, with India and China both cutting deals. Sri Lanka is now pinning its hopes on an IMF bailout.
Whoever takes over faces a brutal economic situation, raising the prospect of a series of unstable governments and of broader fracturing in a country with deep ethnic and social divisions, which has already endured so much violence.
The kind of themes that might unite the public – greater fairness, tackling corruption – run against the interests of the political elite.
The dramatic turn against the Rajapaksas is a warning to governments everywhere of the dangers they face as food and fuel prices soar; protests are breaking out around the world. Even as Sri Lankans stormed the palace in Colombo last Saturday, thousands were in the streets of Tirana, Albania.
The public’s rejection of the family should be especially salutary to leaders who have relied upon patronage and authoritarianism rather than attempting to answer real needs. A reputation for ruthlessness is not enough.
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