By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, March 11: Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR) last week published a book titled THE CONSPIRACY to Oust Me From The Presidency’ in English and Sinhala.
Instead of having a book launch event with great fanfare inviting religious leaders, politicians and foreign diplomats, as is customary for political leaders, GR sent copies of the 179-page book directly to main booksellers across the country. He issued only a media release announcing the publication of the book.
Immediately after the release of the book United National Party chairman Vajira Abeywardena MP announced that he will launch a book shortly which relates the inside story about how the incumbent President Ranil Wickramasinghe became Head of the State with a solitary seat in Parliament after the 2022 Aragalaya uprising. He had already released a compilation of newspaper cartoons about the President last week.
The local and foreign media gave much publicity to GR’s book which he described is based on first-hand experience of an internationally sponsored regime change operation. The book he said would interest not only Sri Lankans but also foreigners.
However, the book does not seem to have created much sensation among people Sri Lankans. It mostly contains matters that are already known to the public. Perhaps it would have attracted more attention if GR, who fled the country amidst an unprecedented people’s uprising and resigned from the Presidency while in Singapore, had given his book a different title.
Talking of international and local conspiracies is a habit of the Rajapaksas. They have fabricated conspiracy theories to explain their failures.
The Rajapaksas have already been saying that the people’s uprising that drove them from power two years ago is a conspiracy by domestic and foreign forces. They do not accept that the people took to the streets and revolted against them as the result of their policies which led the country to bankruptcy for the first time in the history of modern Sri Lanka.
The leader of the National Freedom Front, Wimal Weerawansa, an erstwhile staunch ally of Rajapaksas, who turned against them after having stripped of ministerial position by GR in the early part of 2022, had already released a book titled ‘ Nine ; The Hidden story ‘ on the alleged international conspiracy behind the Aragalaya last year. It is reported that Weerawansa’s book contains more details than GR’s.
With the country waiting for the national elections, the publication of GR’s book two years after he was forced to resign is interpreted as a signal of his willingness to re-enter politics.
Meanwhile, there are those who say that it was not a coincidence that the book came out at the time when elder brother Basil Rajapaksa returned from the United States to steer the Sri Lanka Padujana Peramuna (SLPP) towards the elections.
GR says in the book that he had to step down as a result of a regime change operation with the support of international powers. Despite claiming that the book is based on first-hand experience of the conspiracy, he avoided mentioning any country by name. He did not produce any credible evidence of a conspiracy.
However, his contention is that the geopolitical rivalry between China and other countries is responsible for his downfall. He argued that his downfall was the result of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects after 2006 that brought an element of geopolitical contest to the Sri Lankan political landscape.
The former President said that it would be extremely naïve for anyone to claim that there was no foreign hand in the moves to made to oust him from power. He further said that foreign intervention in Sri Lanka started since the day he won the war against the Tamil Tigers.
“From the time I was elected as President in November 2019, local and foreign forces started working to remove me from power. Immediately after I took office, the Covid-19 pandemic began spreading in Sri Lanka and across the world. I had to spend my two and a half years in office trying to control the pandemic.”
” After the pandemic was brought under control by an effective vaccination campaign in March 2022 and when the economy was beginning to recover, the conspiratorial forces started their campaign to remove me from the Presidency. Today foreign intervention and manipulation of internal politics have become a fact of life in Sri Lanka in a manner never experienced in the first sixty years of independence of this country.”
“Attempts to remove me from office have brought a new trend in the politics of Sri Lanka, which had witnessed a peaceful transition of power through democratic elections since independence,” GR said in his media release.
His comments at various points in the book reveal his belated acceptance that he was a political neophyte. He has openly stated that he was not able to properly exercise his power as he was not the leader of the ruling party. GR should have known why previous Executive Presidents including his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa made sure that they were also the leaders of their parties. He thought that since the party was under the control of his brothers, he would not face any problem in the political front. May be blood is thicker than water, but political power is thicker than blood.
The main reason that prompted me to comment on GR’s book is to present some observations on important passages on the Aragalya uprising .
It appears that he wrote this book to attribute ethnicity-based political reasoning for the popular revolt against his rule. GR said it was obvious that all the Aragalaya related protests held especially in Colombo may have been motivated by the fear that if he continued in power, the Sinhala Buddhists would have been strengthened to the detriment of the minority communities. The Aragalaya, which had the support of foreign powers from the very first day, was inimical to the interests of the Sinhalese, especially the Sinhalese Buddhists.
He further said that if anyone examines thoroughly who gathered at the Colombo Galle Face Green it can be clearly seen that all of them belong to the sections of the population that already rallied against him.
“The perception that I was against the Tamils and Muslims was reinforced. Although I maintained excellent relations with the Catholic Church, they also later turned against me. Those who participated in the Aragalaya had different goals and priorities.”
” If anyone who had the impression that the purpose of the Aragalaya movement was to mitigate the hardships faced by the people as a result of the economic crisis, it is simply delusional. The agenda of diaspora Tamils demanding a united Sri Lanka instead of a unitary state was clearly visible in the Aragalaya. They have been demanding a political solution to the ethnic conflict based on a federal set up” the former president said.
He has also gone to the extent of saying that his very election to power was the result of a contest between the Sinhala and Buddhist interests on the one hand and all non- Sinhala and non-Buddhist elements on the other hand.
Although the Supreme Court ruled in November last year that the three Rajapaksa brothers and some senior officials who held key positions in their government, including the two former Governors of the Central Bank, were responsible for the collapse of the economy, GR adamantly refuses to accept that his government was responsible for the crisis. He is intent on portraying himself as an innocent victim of a dangerous conspiracy.
Now doubt his narrative is a clear demonstration of the Rajapaksas’ determination to regain the support of the Sinhala people by taking a stand against the interests of minority communities through the mobilization of the majority community. They can easily attribute the political opposition to them as a conspiracy of foreign powers.
It is clear that the objective of the Aragalya movement was genuine and in the initial stages of the struggle there were manifestations of a political revolution which was carried out peacefully and turned the attention of the whole world towards Sri Lanka.
But when the movement turned into a mass struggle, various political forces infiltrated it and diverted it to violence, by storming strategic state buildings including the President House, Temple Trees and the Prime Minister’s Office creating a convenient situation for the government of the new President Ranil Wickremesinghe to justify repression.
Aragalaya is a very recent example of the fate that would befall a popular uprising which has no clear objectives and a proper leadership guided by progressive political principles.
The Rajapaksas never dreamt that the Sinhalese people would rise up against them so quickly. They were labouring under a strange belief that the Sinhalese community would forever be slavishly loyal to them and that Sri Lanka’s political power would be their monopoly. The Rajapaksas expected the Sinhalese to support them without a murmur tolerating their shenanigans.
The Rajapaksas either need to return to power or ensure that someone who does not hold them accountable for past misrule comes to power. There is no doubt that their moves in the coming days will be based on this objective. They have no other way to rebuild their party and regain the support of the Sinhala people other than indulging in propaganda about an imaginary international conspiracy and anti-minority politics.
When we look at today’s geopolitical situation, it is not new that powerful countries intervene in the internal affairs of other countries and manipulate the political forces there, but it should be understood that the actions of the rulers create a conducive situation for such interventions.
GR’s view that popular the uprising was against the interests of Sinhalese Buddhists is an insult to the sanity of that community. Only the next elections will show whether attempts at majoritarian mobilization will gain traction with the Sinhalese masses.
But no longer should majoritarian mobilization be allowed to cover up corruption and misrule. If not, there will be no future for Sri Lanka.
END
