Colombo: Known as “The Terminator” to family and enemies, he ruthlessly crushed Tamil insurgents to end a decade-long civil war. Sri Lankagotabaya Rajapaksa Terminated his own presidency. He did it from a safe haven.
His unrelenting military strikes once attracted thousands of people seeking refuge abroad, but on Thursday the 73-year-old emailed in his resignation from Singapore.
One of a family of four who have dominated the country’s politics in recent years, Rajapaksa was the Defense Secretary from 2005 to 2015, headed by his brother Mahinda.
He has denied allegations that at least 40,000 minority Tamil civilians were killed by soldiers under his command during the final months of the war.
He was also considered the architect of the “white van” hijacking under Mahinda, when dissidents and journalists were kidnapped and disappeared in the ubiquitous white vans.
But the allegations cemented his tough image in the eyes of some from the majority Sinhalese community, who offered him their massive support in the 2019 elections.
For Sri Lanka’s influential Buddhist clergy, he was the reincarnation of the Sinhalese warrior king Dutugemunu the Great, who is known to have overthrown a Tamil ruler.
Dtugemunu ruled for 24 years, but Rajapaksa submitted his resignation less than three years into his rule – the first leader to resign since the South Asian nation adopted an executive presidential system in 1978.
It came five days after the collapse of his presidency, when thousands of protesters occupied his official residence, and a day after he left his country for the neighboring country. Maldives,
Hastily exited after months of demonstrations demanding his resignation over the country’s worst economic crisis, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic but intensified by mismanagement.
The ex-serviceman publicized his lack of political expertise as a virtue, but Tamil legislator Dharmalingam Seethathan said that what Rajapaksa projected as his strength was actually the opposite.
“His lack of political knowledge showed his way of working,” Seethathan told AFP. “He turned from one crisis to another.
“Whenever I met him, he used to say that his focus was on the economy and law and order, but he failed in both.”
Rajapaksa came to power on a manifesto promising “scenes of prosperity and splendor”. According to the United Nations, the country is now in dire need of humanitarian aid.
As the coronavirus pandemic hit tourism and foreign remittances – both mainstays of the economy – it faced a foreign exchange crisis.
The country’s 22 million people have been facing acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines since the end of last year, and poverty is spreading. Prolonged power cuts – due to lack of dollars to pay for fuel – have added to the woes of the people.
When he took office in November 2019, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves stood at $7.5 billion, but recently fell to “one million dollars” according to the prime minister. Ranil Wickremesinghe,
Under Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in April. It declared bankruptcy and inflation soared in June.
The once prosperous country recorded its worst recession in 2020, as the economy shrank by 3.6 percent, and is expected to shrink by seven percent this year.
“This pariah stole our future,” ex-MLA Hirunika Premchandra shouted at a recent demonstration outside Rajapaksa’s house. “Gota is a fairy. We must get rid of her.”
Rajapaksa’s tenure was marked by a policy U-turn. Critics say he overturned more than 100 government decrees, earning him the nickname “Gazette Rivers”.
He abandoned the democratic reforms of the previous administration and made the presidency more powerful, but agreed to return those powers to parliament in the final months of his term.
Soon after coming to power, he drastically cut taxes to win over his financial backers, a move that was partly attributed to Sri Lanka’s severe economic crisis. Now those taxes are being raised.
Arguably his biggest policy blunder was the banning of agrochemicals in April last year. He reversed the ban six months later, but by then more than half of the country’s crops had been damaged.
The government promised but failed to compensate the millions of farmers affected by Rajapaksa’s disastrous campaign to become the world’s first 100 percent organic farming country.
As food and fuel shortages gripped the country and prices soared, with protests in cities and towns across the island asking them to leave.
During the pandemic, Muslims, the country’s second largest minority, have received condemnation from the Islamic world as well as rights groups for refusing to allow them to bury their Covid-19 dead according to Islamic rites and instead cremate them. .
Buddhist monks welcomed his stubborn refusal to allow Muslims to be buried, but the tables quickly turned: a year later, a gas shortage forced Buddhists to bury their dead at their preferred cremation rite.
#GotaGoHome became a trending hashtag on social media towards the end of his reign. After occupying his official residence on Saturday, activists hung an effigy of Rajapaksa in a symbolic gesture of what they wanted to do with him.
His unrelenting military strikes once attracted thousands of people seeking refuge abroad, but on Thursday the 73-year-old emailed in his resignation from Singapore.
One of a family of four who have dominated the country’s politics in recent years, Rajapaksa was the Defense Secretary from 2005 to 2015, headed by his brother Mahinda.
He has denied allegations that at least 40,000 minority Tamil civilians were killed by soldiers under his command during the final months of the war.
He was also considered the architect of the “white van” hijacking under Mahinda, when dissidents and journalists were kidnapped and disappeared in the ubiquitous white vans.
But the allegations cemented his tough image in the eyes of some from the majority Sinhalese community, who offered him their massive support in the 2019 elections.
For Sri Lanka’s influential Buddhist clergy, he was the reincarnation of the Sinhalese warrior king Dutugemunu the Great, who is known to have overthrown a Tamil ruler.
Dtugemunu ruled for 24 years, but Rajapaksa submitted his resignation less than three years into his rule – the first leader to resign since the South Asian nation adopted an executive presidential system in 1978.
It came five days after the collapse of his presidency, when thousands of protesters occupied his official residence, and a day after he left his country for the neighboring country. Maldives,
Hastily exited after months of demonstrations demanding his resignation over the country’s worst economic crisis, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic but intensified by mismanagement.
The ex-serviceman publicized his lack of political expertise as a virtue, but Tamil legislator Dharmalingam Seethathan said that what Rajapaksa projected as his strength was actually the opposite.
“His lack of political knowledge showed his way of working,” Seethathan told AFP. “He turned from one crisis to another.
“Whenever I met him, he used to say that his focus was on the economy and law and order, but he failed in both.”
Rajapaksa came to power on a manifesto promising “scenes of prosperity and splendor”. According to the United Nations, the country is now in dire need of humanitarian aid.
As the coronavirus pandemic hit tourism and foreign remittances – both mainstays of the economy – it faced a foreign exchange crisis.
The country’s 22 million people have been facing acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines since the end of last year, and poverty is spreading. Prolonged power cuts – due to lack of dollars to pay for fuel – have added to the woes of the people.
When he took office in November 2019, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves stood at $7.5 billion, but recently fell to “one million dollars” according to the prime minister. Ranil Wickremesinghe,
Under Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in April. It declared bankruptcy and inflation soared in June.
The once prosperous country recorded its worst recession in 2020, as the economy shrank by 3.6 percent, and is expected to shrink by seven percent this year.
“This pariah stole our future,” ex-MLA Hirunika Premchandra shouted at a recent demonstration outside Rajapaksa’s house. “Gota is a fairy. We must get rid of her.”
Rajapaksa’s tenure was marked by a policy U-turn. Critics say he overturned more than 100 government decrees, earning him the nickname “Gazette Rivers”.
He abandoned the democratic reforms of the previous administration and made the presidency more powerful, but agreed to return those powers to parliament in the final months of his term.
Soon after coming to power, he drastically cut taxes to win over his financial backers, a move that was partly attributed to Sri Lanka’s severe economic crisis. Now those taxes are being raised.
Arguably his biggest policy blunder was the banning of agrochemicals in April last year. He reversed the ban six months later, but by then more than half of the country’s crops had been damaged.
The government promised but failed to compensate the millions of farmers affected by Rajapaksa’s disastrous campaign to become the world’s first 100 percent organic farming country.
As food and fuel shortages gripped the country and prices soared, with protests in cities and towns across the island asking them to leave.
During the pandemic, Muslims, the country’s second largest minority, have received condemnation from the Islamic world as well as rights groups for refusing to allow them to bury their Covid-19 dead according to Islamic rites and instead cremate them. .
Buddhist monks welcomed his stubborn refusal to allow Muslims to be buried, but the tables quickly turned: a year later, a gas shortage forced Buddhists to bury their dead at their preferred cremation rite.
#GotaGoHome became a trending hashtag on social media towards the end of his reign. After occupying his official residence on Saturday, activists hung an effigy of Rajapaksa in a symbolic gesture of what they wanted to do with him.