Aragalaya and brick wall theory

The Galle Face protesters, who have come to be fondly dubbed ‘Aragalaya’ activists, may not have bargained for what is happening today. They may also not have expected to achieve their original goal (of ousting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa) so soon, when they converged on the Galle Face Green in April and set up the Gota-Go Gama. Soon afterwards, they started calling upon Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaska to step down. Their campaign yielded the desired results with Mahinda stepping down on May 09, Basil Rajapaksa resigning from the parliament on June 09 and Gotabaya agreeing to quit on July 09, and tendering his resignation a few days later.

But the question is whether the Aragalaya agitators can be happy about the unexpected political changes their protest campaign has led to. They do not seem happy. They now have some serious issues to contend with. Some of their leaders have been arrested, and they have been asked to leave Galle Face. They are not in a position to mobilize the people in sufficient numbers to countervail the government’s hostile campaign against them. SJB MP Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, during his speech in the parliament, the other day, asked the people to get ready to take to the streets on August 09 to oust the current government. The SJB has since dissociated itself from the proposed move, and Fonseka has changed his tune; now, he says it is up to the Aragalaya activists to decide on a date to launch the Go-home-Ranil campaign, and he will support them. In other words, he will not take the initiative.

The Galle Face protesters are busy fighting a different battle now. The police have ordered them to leave their protest site, and they have moved the courts against the bid to remove them. Those who were planning to go on the offensive have had to resort to defensive action!

Unexpected beneficiary

The Aragalaya benefited UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who became the Prime Minister in May and President in July with the help of the SLPP, has got tough with the protesters, some of whom turned violent on July 13, when they captured the Prime Minister’s Office and set Wickremesinghe’s private residence in Colombo on fire. They also allegedly prevented the CMC fire engines from reaching the burning house to douse the flames.

Some of the protesters and their sympathizers also committed excesses in the aftermath of an attack carried out by the SLPP politicians and their goons on the Galle Face protesters on May 09; the houses and vehicles of many ruling party politicians were torched and SLPP MP Amarakeerthi Athukorale was killed by a mob. Such incidents of violence made public opinion turn against the protesters, and the government is apparently using them to justify the use of strong-arm tactics against Aragalaya.

The police have given the Aragalaya activists time till 5.00 pm on Friday (August 05) to leave their protest site at the Galle Face Green or be evicted. This order has come barely two weeks after a pre-dawn, joint operation launched by the military and the police to evict the protesters from the Presidential Secretariat and its vicinity. Now, the Aragalaya activists have to do as they are told or be driven out of the Galle Face Green. The government has said in no uncertain terms that protests will be allowed only in designated areas.

Several leading anti-government protesters have already been arrested. General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union Joseph Stalin, who was at the forefront of the protest campaign, was arrested on Wednesday (03). It is feared that several other prominent agitators will be taken into custody in the next few days, and the Opposition has accused the government of having launched a political witch-hunt against the Galle Face protesters; the government insists that action has been taken only against those who violated the law, and peaceful protesters will be free to continue with their agitations.

Brick wall theory

The Galle Face protesters are in the current predicament because they did not follow what is popularly known as the thappa niyaya or the brick wall theory, in the Sri Lankan political lingo. Experienced political activists tread cautiously when they set out to bring down governments; they know that haste could prove counterproductive, if not disastrous. They advocate that oppressive regimes should be dismantled the way unstable brick walls are demolished. Some workers, who lack experience in demolition work, use heavy hammers to strike at the bottom of the walls earmarked for demolition and invite trouble; there have been numerous instances where such workers were buried under collapsing walls. Experienced demolition workers start at the top of the wall on the first course of bricks and bring the structure down, brick by brick, without exposing themselves or anyone else to danger. That was how regime change operations were carried out in 1977, 1994 and 2015.

The Aragalaya activists who are both inexperienced and reckless are now in trouble. The main beneficiary of their struggle has been Wickremesinghe as well as his party, the UNP, which got trounced at the last general election (2020). What the resentful public expected was the formation of a national government to introduce reforms to resolve the economic crisis and ameliorate their suffering. Today, only the President and the Prime Minister have changed, and the SLPP is still in power. President Wickremesinghe with only a single UNP MP in the House is at the mercy of the SLPP, which controls the parliament.

After the resignation of PM Rajapaksa, the Galle Face protesters may have thought it would be plain sailing for them because newly-appointed PM Wickremesinghe promised to safeguard their rights, and even encouraged them to continue with their agitation. They went ahead and forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country, paving the way for the election by the parliament of Wickremesinghe as the interim President. The protesters obviously thought that the government would become weaker after the ouster of Gotabaya and they would be able to have their own way, but they made a big miscalculation, and underestimated the ability of the SLPP and its leaders to launch a counterattack. Most of all, they did not know Wickremesinghe.

Illusionary unity govt.?

President Wickremesinghe says he is amenable to the formation of an all-party government, but has not said whether it will be an interim administration, which is what the protesters and the general public want. The Opposition remains noncommittal. The JVP has categorically stated that it will not join any government with the SLPP as a party to it. The government is likely to engineer some crossovers from the SJB and the SLFP and the SLPP dissident group, and try to complete its full term, calling itself a national unity administration. President Wickremesinghe now has the whip hand, and he is not known to relent when he pursues a goal.

Has the government turned the tables on the Galle Face protesters? Some ruling party politicians are bragging that they have brought the situation under control, but it is too early to say who the winner is. It is the people who will decide who wins and who loses in the ongoing battle; if the government fails to resolve the economic crisis and win over the public, it will be doomed. The protesters will be able to regroup and enlist public support again for a mass protest campaign in such an eventuality.