Demonstrators protest at the Presidential Secretariat as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled | Photo: Reuters
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is already in the dustbin of history. The reason why he delayed handing over his letter of resignation? He’s not planning a dramatic comeback as some
conspiracy theorists would have us believe.
He’s desperately seeking a safe haven with immunity from prosecution.
Instead of gloating over the once mighty Gota’s misfortunes, however, we should take stock of the equally desperate situation we are in as a people and country, and behave with common sense and as much restraint as we can muster under the circumstances.
First, a look at events which led to the president’s sudden and inglorious exit.
"‘Gota’ is an illiterate when it comes to reading a people’s mood politically when it appears as big, bold graffiti, or he would have resigned honorably without having to flee like a deposed despot"
Dictators masquerading as democratic leaders inside chaotic democratic systems are the worst, since they are unpredictable, operate outside constitutional laws and can make your worst nightmares come true.
And so it was with Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He and his regime did everything possible to stop or dampen the ninth of July protests called for by the protest movement (Aragalaya), from trying to get a Supreme Court ban to a police curfew and placing armed soldiers all over Colombo and elsewhere.
It didn’t work. Come Saturday (9th) morning, tens of thousands of people walked miles and miles to the Galle Face Green as buses and trains were few and almost every private vehicle seemed stuck at a fuel queue somewhere. The rest is history, and it didn’t get written the way President Gotabaya and his faithful (numbering very few by then) expected.
When people have nothing to lose, they aren’t scared by armed soldiers in sunglasses. In April, people were desperate but hopeful. They expected ‘Gota’ to resign honorably after his unbelievable incompetence ruined the country. Even international donor agencies were saying that in other words when they maintained they would only negotiate with a new government.
But Gota refused to resign. He kept shuffling cards in parliament. On the 9th of May, he almost lost power when his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa bungled and sent his supporters and goons to attack Galle Face protesters. It backfired spectacularly, but ‘Gota’ managed to hang on to power with some help from the military.
The writing was by now clear on the wall, but ‘Gota’ is an illiterate when it comes to reading a people’s mood politically when it appears as big, bold graffiti, or he would have resigned honorably without having to flee like a deposed despot.
I was covering people walking to Galle Face, live with my phone, when the Berlin Wall of Sri Lanka literally came down at the presidential secretariat, sealing the president’s fate; that’s why I got there too late to witness this historic moment. A friend of mine who was there said it was a woman, an ordinary housewife, who first started shaking the iron grille of the boundary wall, not a militant student. Others joined, and sections of the wall came down.
"It wasn’t just the size of the crowd. It was the momentum and velocity of feeling. The pent up anger was a visible tsunami wave, like in the Hokusai painting, ready to sweep away everything that stood before it"
The police and the army, after some initial resistance, wisely stepped back. It wasn’t just the size of the crowd. It was the momentum and velocity of feeling. The pent up anger was a visible tsunami wave, like in the Hokusai painting, ready to sweep away everything that stood before it.
Burning down Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s house, by the way, was uncalled for. I have been a harsh critic of Ranil, but he doesn’t deserve that. He’s the most cultured of our politicians, well read and a genuine lover of the arts. The trouble is that he’s squandered every political opportunity which came his way and no one trusts him. People see him as a prime defender of the Rajapaksas, and there is intense public pressure now for him to resign from his pot luck position as acting president.
Now what? The country’s in a spin, and the Aragalaya too, so it seems. The protest movement which did so much to free the country from the yoke of the Rajapaksa family is either losing focus, or so intensely focused on its goals that it risks suffering from tunnel vision.
It’s well to remember that the initial protests against Gota and his brother Basil Rajapaksa were started spontaneously in April by urban middle class people, mostly youth but including housewives, retirees, whole families – people left badly knocked about by the Rajapaksa brothers’ disastrous economic ‘policies.’ All these people have their politics, but together, they were uniquely apolitical, gathering under the ‘Gota/Basil Go Home’ banner. They were also multi-ethnic and secular in outlook.
As the Galle Face Green became the protest movement’s epicentre, the movement became wider and all-encompassing, with radicals young and old, working class families, the clergy, militant university students and cadres of various political parties all joining the bandwagon, making the movement dynamic and giving it an incredible momentum and power which shook the regime.
"All these people have their politics, but together, they were uniquely apolitical, gathering under the ‘Gota/Basil Go Home’ banner. They were also multi-ethnic and secular in outlook"
If Gota had the sense to resign in April, or even after May 9th when his brother Mahinda sent his goons to ‘demolish’ the symbolic GotaGoGama structures of the protesters, he could have left with more dignity and spared the country this pain and chaos. But he desperately hung on, bringing the violent undercurrents of the protesters to the surface and making them volatile and explosive.
It was in May that fuel shortages began to paralyse the whole country. The July 9th drama was a desperate rising by hungry, angry people with nothing to lose. Without the military backing that enabled him to survive the April protest wave, Gota finally had to flee.
But we are struggling to keep our heads above water in the sinking ship he left behind.
As much as we need a lifeline from donors, common sense will be needed to survive as a nation in the coming months. But common sense is what this country’s politics and politicians have always lacked.
As radicals took over the protest movement, it became a vehicle for those seeking a socialist utopia to reverse the excesses of neoliberal capitalism we have suffered from since 1978.
But what we need is a middle path movement to recovery instead of extremes or we could end up like Cuba.
As for leadership, that’s where the real crisis lies. The principal contenders for the president’s job are, at least in my view, not people who can be trusted to create the kind of modern, secular, multi—ethnic, law-abiding society that the initial protest movement hinted at.
One comes from a closeted political party with a bloodstained history. While you don’t want to hold the past against them, they have never admitted to any of their political crimes. That’s not a good start.
"The movement became wider and all-encompassing, with radicals young and old, working class families, the clergy, militant university students and cadres of various political parties all joining the bandwagon"
Another contender depends on family political legacy more than any independent political vision for his claim to the job. His poor grasp of the modern world is shown by his penchant for endless rounds of Buddhist temples, offerings in hand. That’s not a good start, either.
Another contender is widely believed (though I’m not saying this as I have no actual proof) to have knocked down a motorcyclist and fled. If he had instead called for an ambulance and surrendered to the police, how much nicer it would have been. If this story is true, that’s not a good start, either.
That’s why I’m pessimistic about this country’s future. We should get substantial foreign aid eventually, but our real problem is lack of wise, humane leaders who can’t pacify a restive, chronically frustrated population or say publicly how they are going to build a modern, secular and tolerant state on the fundamentalist, xenophobic ruins that Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brothers left behind.
