Roving Periscope: Even after humiliation, the Rajapaksas trying a comeback from the backdoor!

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Even after being forced to flee in Sri Lanka—Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on May 11, and his brother President Gotabaya on July 9—the discredited clan is reportedly trying to return to power. It might turn the relatively peaceful turmoil into a violent revolution like those in France (1789), Russia (1917), and China (1949).

According to the media reports on Tuesday, Lakshman Namal Rajapaksa, a former sports minister, Member of Parliament, and son of Mahinda, has urged his uncle Gotabaya to “complete his five-year term and then go.” The 36-year-old Namal has already been thinking of how the dynasty can restore its reputation over the long term.

This is when the airport staff at Colombo stopped his other uncle, former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, from boarding a flight to Dubai on Monday evening, to flee.

Earlier, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, announced to resign on Wednesday. His nephew’s statement a day before, and Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena’s that Gotabaya had not fled Sri Lanka and that a new President will be selected on July 20, have lent credence to rumors of the Rajapaksas trying to stage a comeback.

The media reported that Namal also described the Rajapaksa family’s current predicament as a “temporary setback,” adding that the goal now was “to provide as much stability as we can to address the basic needs of the people.”

The Rajapaksa dynasty won its colors because it brutally stamped out Tamil separatism in northern Sri Lanka. The family has been close to China, which has so far kept a studied silence on the island nation’s unprecedented turbulence and, unlike India, refrained from sending any humanitarian aid at all. Now if the Rajapaksas return to power with China’s help, Beijing may open purse strings for the gullible Sri Lankan people!

For years, this well-entrenched dynasty ruled the island nation with an iron fist, striking fear into political opponents, journalists, and other perceived threats to their power. Ever since they stormed into the President’s House on May 9, they announced they would leave it only when a new government takes over.

After months of street protests over surging prices and shortages of basic goods such as food or petrol, Gotabaya was forced to flee last weekend as angry protesters stormed his official residence. The unrest showed the public fury at the Rajapaksas, whose three-year administration left the country pleading for cash from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and nations like China and India.

In April, Sri Lanka, for the first time since independence from Britain in 1948, defaulted on foreign funds of USD 52 billion.

But these compounding problems have not deterred the Rajapaksas. They seem to think of it all as a temporary setback.

In the August 2020 elections, the Rajapaksa family’s political party, Sri Lanka People’s Front (known by its Sinhala initials SLPP), got a landslide victory and a clear majority in the parliament. Five members of the Rajapaksa family won a seat each in the parliament. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa became the new Prime Minister. Gotabaya, the sixth Rajapaksa, became the President.

In a recent interview at the ruling party’s office in Colombo, which was also vandalized by an irate mob during the May 9 violence, Namal said Gotabaya “should complete his term and then go.” He described the family’s current predicament as a “temporary setback,” adding that the goal now was “to provide as much stability as we can to address the basic needs of the people, and in the meantime work on long-term strategies.”

Namal is the eldest son of Mahinda, 76, who previously held the top job from 2005 to 2015. With Gotabaya as his Defense Minister during that time, Mahinda crushed a three-decade-long insurgency from Tamil rebels using brutal tactics that prompted widespread concerns about civilian deaths. They also crushed political opposition and racked up billions of dollars worth of debt, mostly to China.

Although the Rajapaksas lost power in a dramatic 2015 election, they came roaring back in 2020. But a series of policy blunders combined with the pandemic soon brought about food and fuel shortages that triggered mass protests, eventually forcing Mahinda to flee.

The senior Rajapaksas seem to feel they could restore their influence by retiring themselves from public life and promoting younger family members into power. This they can do by rebranding youngsters like the bodybuilder Namal who, the media said, is positioning himself as the main person from the next generation to take the mantle.

Sri Lanka’s problem, he said, was that it deviated from a plan to turn the country into a manufacturing and transshipment hub. He favored the up-gradation of airports to attract more tourists and improve agricultural output so the country had ample supplies to feed itself.

But he also insisted that he doesn’t believe in “dynastic politics!”

In the Hambantota district on the southern coastline, the family’s base of power for decades, the political fate of the Rajapaksas remains uncertain, as is the port they gave away to China. Armed soldiers patrol outside their sprawling ancestral bungalow, which was reduced to burned-out rubble in May. Locals also destroyed a museum built in the family’s honor, vandalized their tombs, and toppled a gold-plated statue depicting a family hero.

The family’s connection to Hambantota stretches back decades. D.A. Rajapaksa, Mahinda and Gotabaya’s father, was a prominent lawmaker. Relatives have homes scattered across the district.

Their critics associate Hambantota with the clan’s extravagant spending habits. An international airport built a decade ago in their name is devoid of passenger flights. A sprawling cricket stadium hardly hosts international matches. And cargo ships barely dock at a USD 1 billion port constructed with Chinese money.

“If Bongbong Marcos could come back, why not the Rajapaksas?” their supporters said, referring to the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos who just won the presidency in The Philippines. “It’s just a matter of time before people realize that the Rajapaksas worked to better the country.”