Colombo: In Sri Lanka, where all hopes have collapsed and lakhs of people have taken to the streets, the people are looking for two leaders who controlled the power. Both are still issuing statements, but information about their whereabouts is not available. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is still a part of power, is the first in the Rajapaksa family, which consists of six of the most powerful people in the country.
Gotabaya was not inside the President’s official residence on Saturday when the mob stormed it. The ‘drowning’ was without giving a clue as to where he escaped to. Rajapaksa has officially announced that he will step down on Wednesday. However, the second most prominent Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has announced that he may resign once the new cabinet takes office due to the opposition’s efforts.
Gotabaya got everything wrong
Mahinda’s ascension to power from the Rajapaksa family in 2005 brought about a historic change in Sri Lankan politics. Mahinda began by appeasing the Buddhist Sinhalese majority and consolidated power by suppressing the LTTE in 2009. All this time Gotabaya was in a key role in the Defense Department.
Mahinda lost power in 2015, but in 2019, the Rajapaksa family regained power through Gotabaya. The stupid decisions taken by Gotabaya, who began by inflating Sinhala nationalism with the pretext of stability and development, pushed the country into a deep crisis. After building a huge airport and port in his own name and banning chemical fertilisers, everything he touched went wrong and the country did not even have money to buy petrol.
Things got to the point where the impatient people finally went straight to ousting the president. The current situation is that Gotabaya, who has accepted his resignation, cannot even send a letter directly to the Speaker to leave.
Wickramasinghe with an untimely header
Ranil Wickramasinghe took charge of the vacancy left by Mahinda, a senior member of the Rajapaksa family, when the country was in a severe governance crisis last April and the finance minister resigned. But for Ranil, who held the title of Prime Minister six times, this time nothing was good.
The new prime minister, who had been releasing his insights in weekly statements, had to go into hiding for weeks. Although the cabinet is meeting, he has not shown the courage to come to the public platform and talk to the agitators.
The agitators say that Ranil was making himself a cow for Gotabaya. Even if the opposition unites and elects a new prime minister, there is concern that things will get worse.