There is growing support among the urban and rural working class, suffering most from the food and fuel shortages. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, head of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka (about 6% of the population, both Sinhalese and Tamil, is Catholic), unambiguously condemned the regime and called for a thorough investigation of the 2019 attacks. Sinhalese Buddhists, including monks, joined the commemoration of the Tamil victims of May 2009 alongside representatives of other religions, who celebrated the end of Ramadan, Easter and the Buddhist festival of Vesak together. For the first time, protest seems to have transcended ethno-religious divides. The protest movement’s strength comes from its growing support among the urban and rural working class, who are suffering most from the food and fuel shortages. And the opposition, represented by former president Sajith Premadasa (populist right), M A Sumanthiran (Tamil party) and Anura Dissanayake (Marxist left), have denounced the president’s response as political manoeuvring. But the new prime minister is politically isolated. He has appointed his former opponent Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, tasked with forming a national unity cabinet and obtaining concessions from international creditors. The protestors secured the entire cabinet’s resignation in April - though not that of the president, who retains a parliamentary majority and says he will serve out his term until 2024.
The makeshift ‘GotaGoGama’ village here quickly became a centre of cultural and political creativity, with banners and slogans such as ‘Corrupt power at the top, brave struggle at the bottom’ and ‘Enough of the 225’, a reference to the number of parliamentarians.įollowing savage repression by the Rajapaksas’ thugs, the mobilisation spread more widely across the island, despite ongoing violent interventions by the police. The entire political system is now facing a challenge from the Aragalaya (‘struggle’ in Sinhalese) protest movement, which erupted in Colombo, and young activists demanding the president’s resignation have occupied Galle Face Green, a large seafront park in the city. Food shortages and price rises have triggered widespread anger (food prices rose 46% in a year, petrol prices 140%). Since the financial crisis, which began in April 2022 with the country unable to meet its debt payments, the Rajapaksas’ popularity has crumbled.
Angry giant stepping on army free#
Under his charge, the army, which was the country’s largest employer by the end of the separatist conflict, was put in charge of policing, public works and land management, and was able to set up commercial and tourist businesses free of political or financial control. After a period in the US, he returned to serve as his brother Mahinda’s defence secretary. The other pillar of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime is the army, where he began his career in the 1980s, using counter-insurgency techniques against Tamil separatists and Sinhalese rebels. These victories removed the sting of Mahinda’s defeat in 2015 by an alliance of civil society activists and the old conservative-liberal United National Party led by Ranil Wickremesinghe.Ī factor in the Rajapaksas’ success since 2015 has been their encouragement of extremist anti-Muslim Buddhist movements on the Burmese model Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority (8% of the population) have come to represent the enemy within, replacing the defeated Tamil minority. The Easter bombings on 21 April 2019 targeting hotels and Christian churches, which killed 258 people including 42 foreign nationals, served to reinforce such views the Islamist group responsible had been on the intelligence services’ radar, and Wickremesinghe’s government (2015-19) was blamed for laxity, although the commission of inquiry investigating whether government manipulation played a role has been unable to complete its work. Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the 2019 presidential election and his party secured a big parliamentary majority in August 2020. It also survived restrictions on the press and judiciary, the army’s growing role in public life, and favouritism and corruption among the ruling clan. Their support comes from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority (over 70% of the population) and was boosted by the army’s victory over the Tamil Tigers in 2009 ( 1) in office, they have instrumentalised Buddhism and called for a return to ‘cultural authenticity’, which is in fact a fantasy version of the country’s pre-colonial past.ĭespite human rights abuses against Tamil separatists and Sinhalese opponents, their popularity endured.
The Rajapaksa family have been in power in Sri Lanka for most of the past 17 years Mahinda Rajapaksa was president from 2005 to 2015 and his brother Gotabaya has occupied the top job since 2019.
0 kommentar(er)
