Namal Rajapaksa, the nephew of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is already considering how the dynasty can reclaim its reputation.
For years, the Rajapaksa dynasty ruled Sri Lanka with an iron fist, terrifying political opponents, journalists, and other perceived threats to their power. Protesters are now chasing them out of their homes and power.
For years, the Rajapaksa dynasty ruled Sri Lanka with an iron fist, terrifying political opponents, journalists, and other perceived threats to their power. Protesters are now chasing them out of their homes and power.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 73, is expected to resign on Wednesday, following months of street protests over rising prices and shortages of basic goods such as food and gasoline. After spending time holed up at his official seaside residence, protesters yelling “Gota Go Home” forced him to flee in dramatic scenes on Saturday while breaching the compound’s gates.
The unrest demonstrated public outrage at Rajapaksa, whose three-year administration has left Sri Lanka pleading for money from the International Monetary Fund and nations such as China and India after the country defaulted on foreign debt for the first time since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. Bondholders are also enraged: the Rajapaksas were named in a lawsuit last month seeking more than $250 million in unpaid debt — the first of potentially many.
But it wasn’t just protesters who wanted Rajapaksa out of office: other members of his family saw him as a dormant leader. And one of his 36-year-old nephews, Namal Rajapaksa, has already begun to consider how the dynasty can restore its reputation in the long run, even as the increasingly violent protests have some observers wondering if the entire family will be forced into exile.
Namal said in a recent interview at the ruling party’s Colombo office, which was vandalized by a mob during the May 9 violence, that Gotabaya “should complete his term and then go.” He called the family’s current situation a “temporary setback,” adding that the goal now was “to provide as much stability as we can to address the basic needs of the people, while working on long-term strategies.”
Namal is the eldest son of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the current president’s brother who was president from 2005 to 2015. With Gotabaya as his defense minister at the time, Mahinda crushed a three-decade Tamil insurgency with brutal tactics that sparked widespread concern about civilian casualties. Simultaneously, the brothers sought to crush political opposition while amassing billions of dollars in debt, primarily to China.
Despite losing power in a tense 2015 election, the Rajapaksas returned four years later, with Gotabaya as president and Mahinda as prime minister. However, a series of policy mistakes combined with the pandemic soon resulted in food and fuel shortages, sparking mass protests and forcing Mahinda to resign as prime minister in May.
According to people familiar with the situation, Mahinda resisted Gotabaya’s calls for him to step aside for weeks before finally relenting. Gotabaya was the last Rajapaka left in the cabinet at the start of the year, and he’ll be gone soon.
According to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based research group, the tensions between the brothers reflect their different leadership styles.
“Mahinda is a populist politician who the people still adore,” Saravanamuttu explained. “However, Gota is a much more reserved, introverted individual with no experience.” Whereas the Rajapaksas used to avoid public sparring, they are now pointing fingers at one another.
In an interview last month at his official residence, which is now occupied by protesters, Gotabaya admitted that broad tax cuts and a fertilizer ban enacted shortly after he took office failed. But he characterized those blunders as collective, and said his request for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund last year was turned down by advisors and relatives until protests became violent.
“I didn’t get the support or proper implementation from the people who were responsible,” Gotabaya said, adding that he would not run for president again after his current term ends in 2024.
Namal stated that his father disagreed with the implementation of broad tax cuts and urged Gotabaya not to implement an ill-advised ban on synthetic fertilizers. “If my father had been president, he would never have made that decision,” Namal said. Requests for comment from Mahinda went unanswered.
Regardless of who is to blame, the Rajapaksas are at an all-time low and in desperate need of a rebranding. And Namal is positioning himself as the primary successor from the next generation.
During the interview, Namal spoke in a measured, calm voice like a seasoned politician. The former sports minister, who enjoys bodybuilding, wore a short-sleeved shirt that revealed part of his biceps.
Namal stated unequivocally that his policies would be more in line with his father’s than his uncle’s. Sri Lanka’s problem, he explained, was that it strayed from a plan to make the country a manufacturing and transshipment hub. He also saw the need to improve airports in order to attract more tourists and to increase agricultural output so that the country could feed itself.
He acknowledged his family’s history in power, but he also stated that he does not believe in “dynastic politics.”
“My father began 55 years ago in Hambantota, and I began five years ago — it’s a long journey in politics,” Namal explained. “This is a rough patch, so accept it and move on.”
( Curtesy Indian Express)