Opinion Public anger also points to the way out: A new political leadership is needed to steer Sri Lanka out of present impasse

In scenes reminiscent of the Arab Spring, citizens stormed the residences of Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister in Colombo on Friday, forcing both leaders to announce that they would quit their respective offices. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the main target of the protests that erupted in April over food and fuel shortages and have continued since, promised to resign by Wednesday. The Speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament, Yapa Abeywardena, is expected to take over as acting president and prime minister, and facilitate, possibly, the setting up of a national unity government. Gotabaya’s resignation could bring down the temperature and help the authorities to persuade the protestors to return home. Though the marches and sit-ins in Galle Face and elsewhere have been largely peaceful, Friday’s violent events suggest that the people, battling acute shortage of essentials, including milk, baby food, petrol, are on the edge. Only a new leadership can win back public trust in government and steer the island nation’s economy out of choppy waters.

Gotabaya should have taken moral responsibility for failing to stem the rot and quit long ago. Instead, he chose to deflect the blame on to his ministers, shuffle the Cabinet and cling on to power. His choice of Ranil Wickremesinghe as the replacement for Mahinda Rajapaksa, who resigned as PM in May after massive protests, failed to yield results. Wickremesinghe, though a seasoned politician with considerable experience in managing the economy, has lost credibility through his association with the Rajapaksas. New Delhi has been helping Colombo with money for food and fuel, but the world must step in quickly and for that it is important that there is a government. Sri Lanka certainly needs a deep clean and while this is a chance to do that, anything that is likely to cause more political instability should be eschewed. Both Gotabaya and Wickremesinghe need to make way for fresh faces so that the country doesn’t slip into anarchy, a situation that Sri Lanka experienced when the ultra-Left Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna staged a violent insurrection in the 1980s. The international community must not allow Sri Lanka to become the second failed state in South Asia after Afghanistan.

Advertisement

Protesters at the protest site in Colombo on Sunday. (Photo: AP)

Eventually, Sri Lanka’s salvation lies in parliamentary politics. After all, it is one of South Asia’s oldest democracies, with a patchy record on minority rights and civil freedoms including free speech but an admirable record in building a welfare state. The Rajapaksas were beneficiaries of a polarised polity that thrived on promoting a populist majoritarian nationalism and in power, focussed on “internal enemies” — first Tamils, and later, Muslims — instead of rebuilding the post-war state through social reconciliation and demilitarisation of the political economy. That phase in Sri Lankan politics may well be over, going by the sentiment on the streets. That’s the silver lining to build on.