Accused of mismanagement and corruption, the nation's top clan is down but not out
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
As dawn broke in Sri Lanka on May 10, helicopters roared over the house of an elderly couple who had just sat down for tea. "There's something fishy going on," the husband, a retired civil servant who spoke on condition of anonymity, recalled telling his wife.
His hunch was correct. The Sri Lanka Air Force had deployed two Bell 412EP helicopters from Ratmalana Airport for an unprecedented rescue mission: to fly Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had quit as prime minister hours earlier, from Colombo to a heavily fortified naval base on the northeastern coast of the Indian Ocean island. Until then, the 76-year-old -- the patriarch of the family that has dominated Sri Lankan politics for nearly two decades -- had lived at Temple Trees, the prime minister's residence in the commercial capital.
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| A damaged bust of D.A. Rajapaksa, father of both the president and the former prime minister, lies amid wreckage at a museum in the family stronghold of Hambantota on May 11. © Reuters |
Below the flight path, and elsewhere in the country, lay the blackened shells of torched mansions, monuments and a museum affiliated with the Rajapaksas and their allies in parliament. After pro-government goons were unleashed from Temple Trees the previous day to attack peaceful anti-Rajapaksa protesters who had camped outside its gates, some citizens expressed their fury with fire.
Among the losses was a statue of Don Alwin Rajapaksa, father of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, which had stood as symbol of family pride in the south. It was pulled down by a crowd, in a scene reminiscent of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad.
The Rajapaksas' younger brother Basil, a former finance minister, was also reportedly spirited to a safe house and "has been MIA (missing in action)," a Colombo-based diplomat said two days after Mahinda's flight.
All this calls into question the future of the 39-member Rajapaksa clan -- and that of a country desperately struggling to escape its worst economic crisis. Then there is the matter of ties with China, which became Sri Lanka's leading banker and builder largely at the Rajapaksas' invitation.
Until recently, as many as six Rajapaksas held government positions, overseeing 70% of the national budget. Now the only one left in office is President Gotabaya, Mahinda's hawkish younger brother, who was elected in 2019. The 72-year-old former military officer, known for his fierce temper, has retreated into the heavily protected president's residence in the heart of Colombo's business district.
It is from there that he handpicked veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe, the sole parliamentarian of a weak opposition party, to succeed Mahinda as premier. But Wickremesinghe, who has held the post five times before, faces a credibility test. Is he there to save Sri Lanka's bankrupt economy, or the crumbling Rajapaksa dynasty?
Either would be a daunting task. Sri Lanka last week officially defaulted on foreign debts for the first time in its history, while its central banker warned that inflation could soon hit 40%. Much of the population has been plunged into misery, forced to wait hours to buy scarce cooking gas and unable to find powdered milk for their children. Social media posts lament the humiliation of begging to the world for dollars to pay for essential imports of food, fuel and medicine.
By this month, the $81 billion economy, which had a $21 billion import bill last year and has $6.9 billion in foreign debts due this year, was down to a meager $50 million in foreign reserves.
Protesters have congregated at Galle Face Green, transforming the open promenade on Colombo's seafront into a staging area for peaceful, round-the-clock displays of anti-Rajapaksa sentiment. Many of the demonstrators came of age after the country's bloody ethnic civil war ended in May 2009, during Mahinda's 2005-2015 presidency. While they tend to single out Gotabaya -- "Go Home Gota" is a popular refrain -- demonstrators also direct their anger at the rest of the Rajapaksa tribe.
They accuse the Rajapaksas "of being thieves and want them to give back our stolen money," said Meghal Perera, a 29-year-old researcher at a Colombo-based think tank and a regular at Galle Face.
The economic gloom and suspicions of graft have gone a long way toward uniting an often divided nation, experts say.
"The Rajapaksas didn't make an effort to hide their lavish lifestyles even as the country began to witness three waves of pauperization that began with the pandemic in 2020," Jayadeva Uyangoda, a respected former political science professor and author of texts on Sri Lankan politics, told Nikkei Asia. "The attacks on the wealthy mansions on the night of the ninth were because they were seen as symbols of corruption in a broad landscape of poverty."
Although the Rajapaksas deny all wrongdoing, they have been dogged by allegations for years.
In April, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, the former Sri Lankan ambassador to the U.S. and a cousin of the Rajapaksa siblings, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to financial fraud over a $330,000 commission related to a property purchase for the Sri Lankan Embassy.
Last year, in the explosive Pandora Papers revelations, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists pointed fingers at Nirupama Rajapaksa, a former deputy minister and niece of the president, and her husband, Thirukumar Nadesan, for allegedly using shell companies and trusts to stash more than $18 million in tax havens. The couple, who were linked to other luxury properties and expensive artworks in London and Sydney, have rejected the allegations.
Picking up the money trail, the Sri Lankan arm of Transparency International, the global anti-corruption watchdog, has pursued multiple routes to secure Nirupama's asset declaration records. "As far as the public is aware, several complaints have been filed, and several investigations have been launched," said Nadishani Perera, executive director of Transparency International Sri Lanka, though she said a lack of communication on the probes suggests "that there may not be substantive progress."
Other corruption cases against the Rajapaksas have run into walls. Namal, Mahinda's eldest son and a parliamentarian, and his younger brother Yoshitha have been under investigation for alleged money laundering. Gotabaya himself was accused of corruption stemming from his time as defense secretary during Mahinda's presidency. The allegations have been dropped because the constitution assures the president of immunity while in office.
Basil carries similar baggage. When Mahinda was president, Basil was known as "Mr. 10%" because of allegations he took commissions on government contracts.
It was also during Mahinda's presidency that Chamal Rajapaksa, another brother, allegedly used his official residence as speaker of parliament for the signing of a multimillion dollar deal between national airline SriLankan and Airbus to purchase a fleet of A350 jets. The deal later featured in a U.K. court case in which Airbus admitted to bribing Sri Lankan officials.
The ICIJ suggests that investigations have only scratched the surface. "Former government officials have alleged that the [Rajapaksa] family has amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune and hidden part of it in bank accounts in Dubai, Seychelles and St. Martin," the group says.
It remains to be seen whether such allegations will ever be proven. In any event, analysts make a case against the Rajapaksas for economic malpractice as well.
The price of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration's policies since 2019 began to crystallize in the second half of last year, bringing signs of an economic meltdown, according to Nishan de Mel, executive director of Verite Research, a Colombo-based think tank. "Our worst-case scenario -- following the huge tax cuts, the dollar shortages in the market, commercial banks unable to help importers place orders -- came true," he told Nikkei.
"The other problem was the Sri Lankan government's financial numbers were not believable," he said. "So by the beginning of the year, the light at the end of the tunnel was the train coming toward us, unfortunately."
A key figure tasked with cleaning up the mess is Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.
He and the Rajapaksas make strange bedfellows. Wickremesinghe hails from the affluent, Westernized, English-speaking elite minority in Colombo that led the country through the decades after independence from the British in 1948. The Rajapaksas, by contrast, are a rural, land-owning clan from Hambantota in the south. As one analyst put it, they "succeeded in changing the social origins of Sri Lankan leaders," championing the cause of the country's Sinhala-Buddhist majority.
That success may have once mesmerized the masses, but the allure has worn off. Meanwhile, despite ostensibly hailing from the opposition, Wickremesinghe is perceived as a Rajapaksa ally. During his last stint as prime minister from 2015 to 2019, he was accused of failing to go after the Rajapaksas on the corruption allegations.
That haunts him now.
Days after his return to office, a senior lawyer from the largest opposition party accused Wickremesinghe of "playing deal politics," continuing on from his "past tenure as prime minister." The commission to investigate bribery and corruption has 13 pending cases involving Mahinda, Gotabaya, Namal and Yoshitha, added the lawyer, Farman Cassim. These were filed during the last Wickremesinghe government but went nowhere. "Now," he said, they "are to be withdrawn."
Although the protesters still want Gotabaya out, Mahinda's resignation and Wickremesinghe's appointment do appear to have restored a semblance of political calm. Central Bank Gov. Nandalal Weerasinghe on Thursday said that compared to earlier this month, there had been "significant improvement."
"We have a prime minister and a number of ministers, and even the parliament is functioning," he said.
Weerasinghe has signaled that debt restructuring plans are making progress, while the Group of Seven advanced economies have vowed to support Sri Lanka's efforts to secure relief.
China, too, has promised to "play a positive role in easing Sri Lanka's debt burden," but it has appeared reluctant to cut that burden and unhappy about efforts to negotiate help from the International Monetary Fund. "China has done its best to help Sri Lanka not to default but sadly they went to the IMF and decided to default," Qi Zhenhong, the Chinese ambassador in Sri Lanka, told reporters.
Last Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters that "China supports relevant financial institutions in having consultations with Sri Lanka to seek a proper settlement." At the same time, he said, "We hope and believe that Sri Lanka will work in the same direction and make independent efforts to uphold the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment and financing partners, and maintain stability and credibility of its investment and financing environment."
Beijing has loaned and invested billions in Sri Lanka. The decline of the Rajapaksas, and Mahinda's resignation in particular, have been widely seen as a blow to China's geopolitical strategy in South Asia.
Yet it may be premature to write off Mahinda and the house of Rajapaksa.
After over a week in hiding, the patriarch made an unexpected appearance in the legislature last Wednesday, showing everyone that he had not dropped off the map.
"The Rajapaksa brand has been shaken and is not marketable at the moment," observed Uyangoda, the academic. But he would not rule out a rehabilitation. "They will take time to rebrand, and having Ranil there will help."
Source: Nikkei . Read the original here
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