Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s book ‘The Conspiracy to oust me from Presidency” which was launched recently did not evoke much interest or create any stir among the people as its name suggests to do.
Nor did it reveal any hidden facts or details about any incident that would have contributed to his ouster. However, the book is said to have been sold like hot cake due to the curiosity about what it could have contained.
Hence, unlike the commotion that was created in September last year by the Channel 4 documentary which suggested a purported link between the State Intelligence Service (SIS) and the National Thowheed Jama’ath (NTJ), the terrorist organization that was behind the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in 2019, the book seems to have now almost been forgotten even by Rajapaksa’s friends.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa was not the first person to portray the incidents that led to his ouster from the Presidency as a conspiracy. National Freedom Front Leader Wimal Weerawansa had also presented a conspiracy theory in his book “Nine; The Hidden Story” which was launched on April 25, last year. Unlike the former President who does not point a finger at any particular person or institution or a country as the conspirator, Weerawansa had the audacity to accuse the US Ambassador Julie Chung for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s removal from power. He even said that Rajapaksa was to be murdered under the plan while ironically claiming that he was obedient to the US envoy.
Then, Namal Rajapaksa, Gotabaya’s nephew and one of his ministers also told in April last year that removing the Rajapaksa’s from power was the work of a third-party conspiracy. He told a Facebook Live discussion that every single person involved in the Aragalaya (the mass uprising between April and July, 2022 that toppled the Rajapaksa government) was a pawn of a third-party conspiracy, and that the people would understand it later on.
Mahindananda Aluthgamage, the minister in the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government who had been assigned to introduce organic farming after the ban on chemical fertilizer imports also had another conspiracy theory associated with the regime change in 2022. He told Parliament on November 25, 2022 that one or two senior officers in the security forces were engaged in a conspiracy during the Aragalaya and they did not follow orders given by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Conspiracy
Like Namal Rajapaksa, he also promised to reveal the full details of the conspiracy on a later date. However, they never thought to enlighten the people with those precious details for over a year.
The undeniable fact with regard to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was that hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to undergo unprecedented hardships and lost hope of their future and that of their children took to streets from April to July 2022, shouting “Gota go home.” When the huge crowds marched towards the President’s House where President Rajapaksa took refuge on July 9, 2022, he fled not only from that premises but from the country as well. And another undeniable fact was that the ruling party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) filled the vacancy fallen by the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa with Ranil Wickremesinghe who supported the “Gota go home” campaign even after he was appointed Prime Minister by the same Rajapaksa two months ago.
Was the Aragalaya a conspiracy? The irony is that the first agitations that were triggered by the current economic crisis emerged from the rural areas of the country, the strongest support base of the SLPP, against the ban on chemical fertilizer imports. Was it a conspiracy? Although President Rajapaksa and his Agriculture Minister Mahindananada Aluthgamage initially blamed the Opposition parties for the farmers’ protests, the President later, while speaking to a new Cabinet of ministers which he had appointed on April 18, 2022, stated that the fertilizer ban was a mistake.
Sri Lanka had a deficit budget and a balance of payment issue for several decades which compelled the successive governments to borrow from various countries and international financial institutions. When the local industries, especially the apparel industry, export crops, remittance from migrant workers and tourism were hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the foreign reserves reached a crisis point. The fertilizer ban had also affected the export crops and thereby the inflow of foreign exchange.
By early 2022, the situation came to a head with no country coming forward to assist Sri Lanka to bolster its reserves while the country having to repay the loans obtained earlier. The forcible cremation of cadavers of Covid-19 victims had deprived the country of the opportunity to get assistance from the West Asian countries, according to Foreign Minister Ali Sabry.
The only option that was left for the government was to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but some of the advisors of the President, including the then Governor of the Central Bank discouraged it. It was only in March 2022 that the government approached the global lender. President Rajapaksa confessed about this delay as well at the above meeting with the new Cabinet ministers.
By the time the government initiated discussions with the IMF, the country saw miles and weeks long queues for fuel and cooking gas while people were experiencing a 13-hour daily power cut. Fuel shortage and power cuts had their natural chain effect on almost all services resulting in shortages and threefold rise in essential items. Frustration among the people had turned into a rage. The drastic erosion of the ruling party’s support base among the people was vividly visible by the people’s reactions to the queues, power cuts and the rising cost of living.
haphazard actions
The desperation of the government was also clearly evident by its haphazard actions to address the issues. The President appointed an 11-member Economic Council comprising Cabinet ministers and high-ranking officials including those of the Central Bank and the Treasury on March 7 to find solutions to the economic issues. In the following week, on March 15, he appointed a 14-member Advisory Committee comprising business leaders to assist the Economic Council. The Advisory Committee which met on March 21 in turn has proposed to appoint a technical team consisting of officials of the Central Bank and the Treasury to formulate programmes proposing international financial assistance. They also proposed to identify a team of experts to assist the finance minister, apart from appointing a financial and a legal advisor. Meanwhile the President convened an “All-Party conference to find solutions to the same issues. What a confusion it was!
This desperation eroded the people’s confidence in the establishment. The upshot was the sudden rebellion of an angry crowd on March 31 near the President’s private residence in Mirihana. This had a contagious effect and within a week a continuous protest site was formed near the Presidential Secretariat in Galle Face Green. It was that public uprising that ultimately overthrew Gotabaya’s administration on July 9, 2022.
In what stage of this process was there a sign of conspiracy. Can we call the people’s frustration, rage and the uprising a conspiracy? Why should we expect the people to passively endure all those hardships? There might have been various individuals, political parties and groups who might have attempted to exploit the situation. However, the main flow of events stemmed from the failures, mismanagement and unprofessionalism of the leaders. We cannot but agree with Ven. Omalpe Sobitha Thera who had advised the former President this week to accept the mismanagement that led to the economic crisis and his ouster, without attempting to seek sympathy from the people.
