SRI LANKA’S PRESIDENT AND PM RESIGNS AMIDST ECONOMIC HARDSHIP AS RIOTERS TAKE-OVER PRESIDENTIAL LODGE

PUSH NEWS 24 INTERNATIONAL : July 8,2022

Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced his resignation on Saturday, hours after a crowd of angry protesters chased him from his residence, as months of frustration brought on by an unprecedented economic crisis boiled over. 

Hundreds of thousands of people massed in the capital Colombo to demand the government take responsibility for mismanaging the nation’s finances, and for crippling food and fuel shortages. 

After storming the gates of the presidential palace, a throng of protesters walked through its rooms, with some among the boisterous crowd jumping into the compound’s pool. 

Others were seen laughing and lounging in the stately bedrooms of the residence, with one pulling out what he claimed was a pair of Rajapaksa’s underwear. 

At around the same time, the leader had boarded a naval craft at the Colombo port and was taken to the island’s southern waters, where he let it be known he was finally bowing to months of calls for his resignation.  

In mid-March 2022, a social media campaign calling for a mass rally demanding the resignation of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa started gaining traction among a sizable population of youth. The protest was initially to be held on April 10.

However, on the night of March 31, a protest that had started as a peaceful demonstration against shortages of essential items, extended electricity cuts, and soaring costs of living, morphed into a massive rally that shook the mighty Rajapaksa administration to its core.

The security personnel were overwhelmed but held, and after gathering adequate reinforcements they tear-gassed and water-cannoned the remaining protesters. The news of the protests and of the police brutality spread via social media. Now, across the island, scattered, uncoordinated, and leaderless protests are taking place every day, demanding the resignation of the president.

The strength and the spread of the protest movement was such that the entire cabinet of ministers have resigned, 42 government MPs have decided to turn independent, and some members of the Rajapaksa family and their close associates have left the country.

As the crowds chanted slogans expressing their anger against the government, a suggestion was made to walk to the President’s House, which was a short distance from the protest site. As the crowds made their way to the entrance of heavily guarded lane where the President’s House is located and started protesting, many others, who had heard of the protest via television and social media, joined the demonstration, swelling the crowds to thousands.

“To ensure a peaceful transition, the president said he will step down on July 13,” parliamentary speaker Mahinda Abeywardana said in a televised statement. 

Rajapaksa had to be extracted from his residence by troops who fired into the air to keep the crowd outside at bay.  

Soon after they stormed the presidential palace, Rajapaksa’s nearby seafront office also fell into the hands of protesters. 

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the first person in line to succeed Rajapaksa, called a meeting with political leaders and said he was willing to step down to pave the way for a unity government. 

But that failed to placate protesters, who stormed the premier’s private residence and set it alight after night fell.  

Footage shared on social media showed a crowd cheering the blaze, which broke out shortly after a security detachment guarding Wickremesinghe attacked several journalists outside the home.  

No casualties have been reported in the fire so far, and police said Wickremesinghe and his family were away at the time. 

Security forces attempted to disperse the huge crowds that had mobbed Colombo’s administrative district earlier in the day, with dozens injured in the resulting clashes.  

The most attractive feature of the protests for many Sri Lankans, jaded by years of professional politicians, was the leaderless and spontaneous nature of these events. The usual suspects in organizing protests, left-wing unions and student groups, have hitherto played a minuscule role. In fact, when the initial protest for April 3 was being organized, these groups had distanced themselves from the protests fearing that this was a state sponsored psyop. The grassroots protests in Sri Lanka have been compared to the Arab Spring protests, the Yellow Vests protests in France, and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong.

Simultaneously, buoyed by the success of the protests, the opposition parties are demanding in Parliament that President Rajapaksa must resign. Although the opposition has threatened the president and the government with a no-confidence motion, it is unlikely that such a motion would pass in Parliament given its composition. Thus, a lot depends on the success of the protests if the objective, the resignation of the president, is to be achieved.

However, just like social media-driven and leaderless protests in other countries, the lack of legitimate representatives for conflict-deescalating negotiations, a rise in legitimacy-sapping violence, and the lack of policy coherence have started to become a problem as the protests approach their second full week.

These developments correspond with transformations in the dynamics of movement organizing since the introduction of digital technologies. Increasingly, organizational entities like political parties no longer lead the mobilization, and often the driving forces behind these protests are grassroots activists and incidental participants who have leveraged a wide variety of digital technologies. Thus, digitally driven activism is often characterized by organizing beyond formal organizations.

A spokeswoman for Colombo’s main hospital said three people were being treated for gunshot wounds, along with 36 others suffering breathing difficulties after being caught up in tear gas barrages. 

Sri Lanka has suffered through months of shortages of basic goods, lengthy blackouts and galloping inflation after running out of foreign currency to import necessities. 

The government has defaulted on its $51 billion external debt and is seeking an International Monetary Fund bailout. 

Thousands of people had poured into the capital for Saturday’s demonstration, the latest outbreak of unrest sparked by the crisis. 

Police had withdrawn a curfew issued on Friday after opposition parties, rights activists and the bar association threatened to sue the police chief. 

Thousands of anti-government protesters ignored the stay-home order and even forced railway authorities to operate trains to take them to Colombo for Saturday’s rally, officials said. 

“The curfew was not a deterrent. In fact, it encouraged more people to get on the streets in defiance,” the defence official said. 

Sri Lanka has nearly exhausted its already scarce supplies of petrol, and people unable to travel to the capital held protests in other cities across the island.  

Demonstrators had already maintained a months-long protest camp outside Rajapaksa’s office demanding his resignation.  

The camp was the scene of clashes in May when a gang of Rajapaksa loyalists attacked peaceful protesters gathered there.  

Nine people were killed and hundreds were wounded after the violence sparked reprisals against pro-government mobs and arson attacks on the homes of lawmakers.