The D. A. Rajapaksa statue, which was pulled down by a violent mob in Tangalle, on May 09, in the aftermath of an SLPP goon attack on a group of anti-government protesters occupying the Galle Face Green, was restored on Nov. 07. A ceremony was held to mark the event with the participation of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and some other members of the Rajapaksa family. The reinstallation of the statue marked a turning point in post-Aragalaya politics.
The symbolic importance of the reinstallation of the Rajapaksa statue may not have been lost on keen political observers. It is thought to be indicative of the reconsolidation of the Rajapaksa family’s hold on power amidst the country’s worst-ever economic crisis, anti-government protests and the resultant political instability.
Born in 1905, Don Alwin Rajapaksa became a member of parliament in 1947. He left the UNP together with S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to form the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1951. He served as a minister and Deputy Speaker. Among his children are prominent politicians such as Mahinda, Gotabaya, Chamal and Basil. He continued to represent the Beliatte electorate until 1960, when he lost his seat, but regained it a few months later following the collapse of the short-lived UNP government. Defeated again in 1965, he died two years later.
According to his biographers, D. A. Rajapaksa lost most of his wealth due to his involvement in politics, unlike the present-day politicians, and even had to sell his car and coconut estates after his defeat at the 1965 general election to look after his family, which experienced severe economic difficulties. But over 50 years on, his children and grandchildren stand accused of questionable acquisition of wealth and extravagance. The same holds true for other political families that have dominated post-Independence politics.
The rise of the Rajapaksas
The Rajapaksa family remained active in politics even after the demise of its head. Mahinda entered the parliament at the age of 24 in 1979, as the youngest-ever Sri Lankan MP, but could not retain his seat at the 1977 general election, where the UNP scored a mammoth victory, reducing the SLFP to just eight seats. He and his elder brother Chamal were elected to the parliament in 1989. Chamal has since remained undefeated. Mahinda became a Cabinet minister in 1994, when the SLFP-led People’s Alliance formed a government under Prime Minister Chandrika Bandaranaike’s leadership. Chandrika went on to become the President three months later in November 1994.
The rise of the Rajapaksa family in politics began after the election of Mahinda as the President in 2005. Basil, who managed Mahinda’s presidential election campaign, entered the parliament in 2007, and Mahinda’s eldest son, Namal, in 2010. The defeat of the LTTE and massive infrastructural development projects, and a healthy growth of the economy despite the country’s increasing debt burden gave a tremendous boost to the popularity of the Rajapaksa family, which ruled the country with an iron fist from 2010 to 2015, when it suffered a massive electoral setback.
The Rajapaksas severed ties with the SLFP, which their father co-founded, and formed the SLPP (Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna) in 2016. Mahinda failed to grab the premiership in 2018, but succeeded in securing the post in 2020 by steering the SLPP to victory at the general election in that year. The SLPP obtained 145 seats in the 225-member parliament and mustered a two-thirds majority with the help of some crossovers.
It was at the height of the Rajapaksa rule (2010-2015) that the D. A. Rajapaksa statue and the Rajapaksa Museum in Medamulana were erected in Tangalle and Medamulana respectively. Controversy has surrounded the allocation of funds for the construction of the museum, which was built when Gotabaya was the Secretary to the Ministry of Urban Development in addition to being the Defense Secretary. He subsequently reimbursed part of the cost. A case was filed against him against the misuse of public funds for the construction of the monument, but it had to be dropped upon his election as President in 2019 owing to his legal immunity.
Display of power
The construction of the Rajapaksa memorials was tantamount to a display of political power of the Rajapaksa family. It is said that funerals and memorials are not for the dead but for the living.
The Rajapaksa memorials were safe while Mahinda and his siblings were out of power. In fact, thousands of people converged at Mahinda’s private residence Carlton in Tangalle, where he went after the January 2015 regime change, urging him to re-enter politics. He made a comeback a few months later, and succeeded in turning the tables on his rivals in 2019 by enabling his younger brother, Gotabaya, to secure the coveted presidency, and paving the SLPP’s victory at the last general election (2020).
Two years later, thousands of people gathered in Tangalle and toppled his father’s statue, having failed to march on his Carlton residence, and mobs damaged the museum dedicated to his parents in Medamulana. The memorials suffered this fate while Gotabaya was still the President. Before the 2019 presidential election, the then government demonized Gotabaya as Hitler incarnate, and warned that he would not tolerate dissent or protests. But his critics were proved wrong, and Gotabaya chose to flee the country and resign when protesters marched on the President’s House instead of ordering a military crackdown, which would have led to a bloodbath.
Nobody would have dared touch, much less pull down, the D. A. Rajapaksa statue or the Rajapaksa museum during the Mahinda Rajapaska government, or even during the Yahapalana government (2015 to 2019).
What made the Rajapaska family so unpopular and weak?
Unlearnt lessons
What went wrong for the Rajapaksa family was that it did not care to learn from experience, which is said to be the best teacher. It lost power in January 2015 because it failed to manage its electoral fortunes, and became impervious to public opinion; it did as it pleased without caring about the consequences of its actions. It antagonized its coalition partners, allowed corruption to thrive, and alienated the public.
The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government became an extension of the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, although the people who voted it into power expected it to be different, and the Rajapaksa family and its loyalists have been making the same mistakes, if not blunders. They began riding roughshod over some of their coalition partners, threatening the unity of the SLPP only a few months after the formation of the new government. Cocky and arrogant, they did not tolerate dissenting views, and harassed everyone who refused to fall in line.
The wings of the Ministers who were not in the good books of the Rajapaksa family or the Basil faction of the SLPP, were clipped. The Cabinet was reshuffled according to the whims and fancies of the family members, and some ministers were even sacked so much so that the SLPP suffered splits even before the government had completed two years in office, and 39 MPs broke ranks and chose to sit as independent MPs in the Opposition in April 2022 amidst anti-government protests.
Pandemic and economic blunders
The Rajapaksa administration would have been able to tackle the SLPP’s internal disputes and other political problems but for its blunders on the economic front. It recklessly slashed taxes, causing enormous losses to the state coffers, thus warranting excessive money printing, which caused soaring inflation and rapid rupee devaluation. It also defended the rupee at the expense of foreign currency reserves.
The Covid-19 pandemic took its toll on the economy, and the government’s failure to impose lockdowns in a timely manner in keeping with expert opinion; politically-motivated relief programs funded by money printing weakened the economy further. The government did not heed warnings from the Central Bank and expert advice that it should seek IMF assistance immediately, the way it had done in 2009, to avert an economic meltdown.
Another huge mistake on the part of the Rajapaksas was to wait until the foreign reserves were extremely low to float the rupee. If the government had opted for a rupee free float earlier while reserves were not that low, its tumble would not have been so rapid and steep, and a lot of dollars utilized to defend the rupee could have been saved.
Thus, it may be seen that if the Rajapaksa government had adopted a proactive approach to solving economic problems, the country could have been prevented from defaulting on its debt and facing credit-rating downgrades and bankruptcy; most of all the Rajapaksa family would not have incurred the wrath of the people, who took to the streets.
Attacks on memorials
Power blinds rulers to reality and makes them act irrationally and recklessly. The Galle Face protest campaign commenced in April 2022, demanding the resignations of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and came to be dubbed Aragalaya. Perhaps, those protests would not snowballed into a full-fledged people’s uprising if the SLPP had refrained from carrying out a goon attack on a group of anti-government protesters at the Galle Face Green, on May 09, triggering a wave of retaliatory violence, which resulted in attacks on the Rajapaksa memorials, the resignation of Prime Minister Rajapaksa and the entire Cabinet, and the appointment of Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister. The second wave of uprising caused the ouster of President Rajapaksa in July and paved the way for the election by the parliament of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe as the President.
President Wickremesinghe has managed to control protests with the help of the police and the military. A let-up in anti-government protests seems to have emboldened the SLPP to flex its muscles on the political front. The reinstallation of the D. A. Rajapaksa statue does not mean that problems are over for the government, however confident its leaders may pretend to be.
Simmering volcano
The country is like a simmering volcano. All the problems that drove the people to rise against the government are far from solved, and economic hardships are worsening. The government has refused to mend its ways, and is testing people’s patience. Anti-government forces will gain a massive boost if the local government elections are postponed further on the pretext of electoral reforms.
Exponential increases in taxes and tariffs, the divestiture of state assets, the soaring cost of living and the shortages of essential commodities and medicines will make the government even more unpopular in time to come although it has managed to retain power in the parliament with the help of crossovers.
The safety of the memorials dedicated to those connected to those in power and their properties will hinge on the ability of the government to resolve the economic crisis, mitigate economic hardships and assuage public anger.
