On Wednesday night, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 73, took his wife and bodyguard with him and fled to the Maldives. It has caused the protesters, who stormed the president’s residence and office on Saturday, to rage. On Wednesday, several people entered the largest state TV channel in the country and ordered that only news about the demonstrations be broadcast. To “restore order”, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has asked the police and military to intervene. A state of emergency has been declared and a curfew has been introduced. In the capital Colombo, the smoke from tear gas hangs heavy over the streets. Military helicopters are circling the air. – It has been a relatively peaceful revolution. Few people have died, but now, after the president fled the country, things have really gotten worse. People are back on the streets, says Indra de Soysa, professor and Sri Lanka expert at NTNU in Trondheim. After the president fled the country, protesters tried to enter the building of the Prime Minister’s office. Photo: DINUKA LIYANAWATTE / Reuters On Saturday, President Rajapaksa announced that he would step down as president on Wednesday. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was appointed acting president. Wickremesinghe took over as prime minister two months ago, and as finance minister two weeks ago. The 73-year-old politician, who has been prime minister five times before, came from the opposition. Yet he is not spared the wrath of the people. Protesters believe he has done too little to quell the crisis since he was incarcerated. And that he protects the president and let him go, even though Wickremesinghe’s relationship with the Rajapaksa family has been strained for many years. Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also gets to feel the rage of the people. They believe he did not do enough to prevent the president from fleeing. Photo: DINUKA LIYANAWATTE / Reuters – Since the unpopular prime minister has been appointed president, I do not think people will go home right away. And the longer they stay on the streets, the greater the chance of violence and that someone will die, says Professor Soysa and continues: – The next few weeks will be critical in terms of politics. And the next few years will be critical in terms of how Sri Lanka will get out of this black hole, he says. Professor of globalization and Sri Lankan expert, Indra de Soysa at NTNU. Photo: NTNU Blames the president NTNU professor Soysa is from Sri Lanka and has followed the situation closely. The background for the unrest is that the country is in a massive economic crisis, he says. Not since Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain in 1948 has it been so bad. The country has failed to pay $ 7 billion in foreign debt and has run out of currency. – There’s an end to the money. The bank account is empty. In addition, petrol and gas prices have risen as a result of the war in Ukraine, says Soysa. Therefore, Sri Lanka does not get imported fuel, gas for cooking, food or medicine. People stand in line for days to buy petrol. And there are daily power outages. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. Photo: – / AFP Concerned about the development – The development in recent days is disturbing. There is always a danger that organized, political groups will be able to coup this form of popular initiative, says Øivind Fuglerud. He has written the book “War and Peace in Sri Lanka” and is a professor of social anthropology at the Museum of Cultural History. Fuglerud believes the situation in Sri Lanka is very unclear at the moment. Sri Lankan expert Øivind Fuglerud believes that the security forces in the country deliberately failed to intervene in the demonstrations. Photo: Cultural History Museum – The question is what the demonstrators really want. – They basically had a demand that the president must resign, and that the regime must be replaced with a new government. But now it seems that the demonstration is taking a different form, he says. Acting President Wickremesinghe says he will step down next week, when parliament has elected a new president. It is scheduled to take place next week. Protesters stormed Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office on Wednesday. They demand that Wickremesinghe also resign and hold him responsible for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s escape. Photo: DINUKA LIYANAWATTE / Reuters Soldiers try to get the protesters out of the Prime Minister’s Office. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena / AP – A perfect storm Despite the fact that the escaped president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was to formally resign on Wednesday, he has not yet delivered an official farewell letter. – The moment he loses his immunity as president, he will be able to come under investigation for corruption. There have been accusations that have clung to him for a long time, says Øyvind Fuglerud. The populist president was elected in 2019, after going to the polls on tax breaks. – He halved the taxes, from around 23 percent to 12 percent. He also chose to repay a loan that the country did not yet have to pay, Soysa says. The Covid pandemic created major economic difficulties for Sri Lanka. The tourists stopped coming, and money transfers from residents who worked in the Middle East stopped. And without imports, farmers do not get fertilizer for their crops. – It has been a crop crash. All these things have led to a perfect storm and people have taken to the streets. – People also want to get rid of corruption, Soysa says. The people of Sri Lanka are tired of the corruption and dynasty of the Rajapaksa family, who have ruled the country through the presidency. Photo: ARUN SANKAR / AFP The dynasty that drove the country into the ditch The Rajapaksa family, with a total of four brothers in the government, has ruled the country for years. Refugee President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was Minister of Defense for many years. Then Brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was president. When Gotabaya won the presidential election in 2019, Mahinda was back, as prime minister. In addition, two other brothers joined the government. Brothers Mahinda, Gotabaya and Basil Rajapaksa have been closely involved in Sri Lankan politics for more than 20 years. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena / AP Basil Rajapaksa became Minister of Finance and Chamal Rajapaksa Minister of Agriculture. At the top, Mahinda’s son, Namal, became sports minister. The father of the Rajapakse brothers also sat in his time in the National Assembly. – Rajapaksa has had a harsh policy towards its own population and is considered to have been at the forefront of a very authoritarian regime for almost 20 years, says Fuglerud. Brothers Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa became famous when they withdrew from a ceasefire agreement in the early 2000s and agreed to crush the Tamil Tigers militarily. The internal war between the Sinhalese authorities and the Tamil Tigers had marked the island for decades. Sri Lanka conflict Photo: Str / Sri Lanka / REUTERS The island state of Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, after being a British colony from 1796 Changed name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka in 1972. Has around 20 million inhabitants The largest ethnic groups are Sinhalese (70 percent), Tamils (about 16 percent) and Muslims (8 percent) The Tamil Tigers / LTTE guerrillas (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) have been fighting since 1972 to establish a separate Tamil state in northeastern Sri Lanka. The armed struggle began for seriousness in 1983 More than 76,000 people were killed in the conflict In December 2001, a unilateral ceasefire was declared on both sides In February 2002, a formal ceasefire was signed. A Nordic observer corps, SLMM, monitored the agreement In April 2003, the LTTE broke the peace talks and accused the government of failing to comply with the ceasefire agreement. 300 square kilometers On April 5, 2009, the military made it clear that they had occupied all of the LTTE’s areas, except for a security zone with about 100,000 civilians. On May 18, 2009, the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was reported killed. On May 24, the Tigers declared that they had laid down their arms and ended the armed struggle. Øyvind Fuglerud says that today’s demonstrations have little or nothing to do with the old conflict. Instead, it is a failed and populist economic policy that has culminated. Economists are shaken by the financial incompetence of those who have ruled in recent years. However, Professor Indra de Soysa does not believe that a political change will not solve people’s financial problems. – In any case, it is the people who will have to pay the bill, Soysa says.
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The president has fled and the military is deployed to gain control of the protesters in Sri Lanka – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
