This story first appeared in www.ft.lk

The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and the independent group of over 40 MPs in Parliament yesterday stepped-up calls for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the Government to step-down first for an-all party interim arrangement to be set up to resolve economic and political crises.

Lawmakers of the two groups intensified their attacks on both the President and the Government amidst reports that several more ruling party MPs have decided to sit in opposition which would result in the SLPP losing its majority in the House.

Three SJB/SLMC MPs who had joined the Government to support the 20th Amendment to the Constitution moved to opposition benches yesterday which leaves the Government which once commanded the support of two thirds of the members of the 225 legislature at around 117 MPs. Digamadulla District MP Faisal Cassim announced in Parliament yesterday that he along with MPs M.S. Thowfeek (Trincomalee District) and Ishak Rahuman (Anuradhapura District) have decided to function as independent MPs.

The harshest criticism of the Government came yesterday from MP Anura Priyadharshana Yapa who along with nine others moved to opposition benches on Tuesday.

“I would like to request this Government to resign. Enough is enough. Today people are scared. People are on the road. Please hand over the administration to an interim Government. There are more qualified people on this side (Opposition) than on your side) and they can help take the country out of this perilous situation,” Yapa said in Parliament.

He said that appointing new Cabinet Ministers is not the need of the hour but the setting up of an interim Government and Cabinet that has the confidence of the public that can bring about necessary constitutional amendments and stabilise the economy.

“This is our country. This is not the President’s, or the Prime Minister’s or the Rajapaksa’s country. Please understand that,” Yapa emphasised.

SLFP MP Dayasiri Jayasekera said they have discussed proposals to set up the interim Government as well as an advisory council consisting of leaders of all political parties in Parliament and what was needed is for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to resign.

“We cannot have a Government side and an Opposition side in this Parliament if we are to deal with the economic crisis. We have to work together as one big group. The Cabinet will be made up of MPs of all parties, there must be a time frame to overcome this problem and once there is political stability, we can stop the county from sliding further on the economic front,” Jayasekera said.

He said there are varying views among the groups who are now in opposition with some insisting that the President step down while others want to bring an impeachment motion against him while others want a no-confidence motion against the Government.

“First, we have to bring the 21st Amendment to the Constitution and correct the mistake that was made by repealing the 19th Amendment.  We urge the Prime Minister to listen to the voice of the people and step down,” he added.

SJB Manusha Nanayakkara said his party is willing to assist in implementing a program to build the country but for that to happen the President must go home. “We cannot join hands with thieves and murders and rebuild the country,” he said.

SJB MP Nalin Bandara also said that by resigning the President will make the way for all parties in Parliament to work together. “Our leader Sajith Premadasa is willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the country.  We will talk to all the groups that have chosen to sit in the opposition and come to a compromise,” he said.

“For a year we are ready to work without any privileges. We are ready to take over this responsibility but the President who bankrupted this county must go first. The queues will not end as soon as we take over but people will give us a chance for a few months to stabilise the situation. With commitment we can put the country on track in six months to a year,” Bandara added.

SJB Parliamentarian S.M. Marikkar yesterday said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa cannot wash his hands from the current serious economic crisis by merely saying sorry but needs to make amends.

“From the fertiliser crisis to foreign currency and reserves crisis, the President must be held accountable. Amidst severe foreign currency shortage, the President forced the country to pay $ 69 million for questionable consignment of organic fertiliser from China. Will the President repay this from his personal funds?” queried Marikkar.

“President gave Cabinet rank status to economic hit man Nivard Cabraal as Central Bank Governor who deceived the country saying no need to go to the IMF and wasted scarce reserves whilst increasing borrowing. The President is responsible for this,” Marikkar alleged.

“Though the President sought forgiveness from farmers for his organic fertiliser only policy blunder, he didn’t say sorry to poor city dwellers who were burdened with exorbitant vegetable prices as a result of misguided policy,” the SJB MP said.

He also said people have taken to streets in protest against economic hardships and their cry for “Gota go home” is justifiable.  “This is an inhuman Government,” he alleged.

It was pointed out that the Government has forced Sri Lanka to bankruptcy. He said to resolve fuel, electricity and LPG shortage the Government needs only to spend $ 2 billion but the bankrupt and corrupt Government is unable to source the required funds.

Marikkar warned that at a time when Sri Lanka is discussing an IMF bailout amidst temporary suspension of repayment of all external debt, the killing of a protester in Rambukkana by the police was a serious violation of human rights.

“The President cannot defeat the anti-Government protests countrywide by the bullet,” SJB MP said adding that the Government is hell-bent on clinging on to power whilst masses are suffering.

Noting that people’s demands are not only “Gota Go Home” and “Rajapaksa’s go home” but also against unprecedented corruption and recovery of stolen wealth of the people. “I will assure that a Government, formed by SJB leader Sajith Premadasa, will take legal action against all corrupt persons and recover their ill-gotten gains,” Marikkar added.

The writer is a Special Correspondent with the Daily FT of Colombo

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This story first appeared in The Wire

A 36-hour island-wide curfew was suddenly announced on Saturday amidst growing public anger at the shortage of essential goods and rising costs.

Colombo: Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa took the unprecedented step of declaring a state of emergency followed by a 36-hour island-wide curfew on Saturday amidst growing public anger at the shortage of essential goods and rising costs that has seen thousands of people take to the streets in protest.

The unexpected curfew announcement on Saturday afternoon is meant to thwart a people’s protest campaign scheduled for Sunday, calling for the president to step down. The announcement sent people rushing to buy essentials, led to the hurried closure of supermarkets and restaurants, and a rush to get home among those using public transport.

Densil Silva, a daily-wage earner at a grocery store, was among those rushing to buy bread and vegetables after the sudden curfew announcement which was aired on radio and television. “I heard about the curfew suddenly and we had to rush and put down the shutters. I had to buy a few things to last till Monday. I am going to lose out on a day’s earnings because of this,” he said.

Harpo Gooneratne, a well-known restaurateur in Colombo who had to hurriedly close down his establishment and send the staff off early on a day when business would have been booming, took to Twitter to vent his frustration. “Today I personally witnessed tourists looking for food to eat as most restaurants had to shut down just being given less than three hours’ notice with no delivery options even,” he wrote.

A scion of the ruling Rajapaksa family and minister for youth and sports called on “authorities” to reconsider the decision.

I will never condone the blocking of social media. The availability of VPN, just like I’m using now, makes such bans completely useless. I urge the authorities to think more progressively and reconsider this decision. #SocialMediaBanLK #SriLanka #lka

— Namal Rajapaksa (@RajapaksaNamal) April 3, 2022

The protests, which began with candlelit vigils in urban townships, have remained apolitical and have grown in number, with the public frustrated by a shortage of gas, fuel, daily power outages and rising costs of essential items. Government hospitals are facing a scarcity of medicines, while the education sector too has been impacted due to power cuts, some lasting more than half a day.

The curfew came hot on the heels of the president’s promulgation of a state of emergency on Thursday night, which gives sweeping powers to the members of the armed forces to arrest and detain people, which are duties usually vested with the police.

The emergency was declared hours after a peaceful protest on Thursday night near the president’s private residence in a suburb of the city’s commercial capital Colombo turned violent, with angry crowds pelting stones at the police and army personnel and attempting to break through barricades to enter the house. Police fired tear gas and sprayed water to disperse the crowds, which was a turning point after days of peaceful protests that have been held across the country with the slogan “GotaGoHome” as the rallying cry.

The president’s office was quick to blame the violence on “organised extremists” who are attempting to replicate the Arab Spring in Sri Lanka, but has failed to substantiate these allegations. On Friday, government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella, when asked by journalists to elaborate on the conspiracy claim, chose to play down the charge and said the people involved were political extremists.

The people’s protest campaign which had been planned for Sunday began on social media, calling on people to take to the streets at 3 pm. The campaign has gathered momentum over the past few days, prompting the clampdown by the government. With a curfew in place, people can be detained for stepping out of their homes and the move is likely to impede the campaign’s success against the president and the government.

Sri Lanka is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since it gained independence from British rule in 1948. The country’s foreign reserves dwindled from $7.5 billion in December 2019 when Rajapaksa took over as president to less than $2 billion by March 2022, with about $4 billion in debt to be repaid by the end of 2022. The Sri Lankan rupee has also depreciated sharply against the US dollar since the country’s Central Bank lifted control on the rupee in early March, pushing up prices of fuel, gas, medicines and other essential items in a country largely dependent on imports.

The government’s response to people’s growing economic woes has been lackadaisical and has failed to grasp the extent to which public anger has been building up. President Rajapaksa, who addressed the nation in mid-March, made a half-hearted effort to appease the public by saying he understood the difficulties they faced, and said the root cause of current issues is the foreign exchange crisis.

Like many others in the government, the president has blamed the economic downturn on the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to an extended lockdown and loss of revenue from tourism, tea and remittances from Lankans employed abroad, three of the country’s primary sources of foreign revenue, But economic experts point the finger at mismanagement by the government for the country’s current plight.

A former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, W.A. Wijewardena, a regular columnist in Sri Lankan newspapers, says three major policy errors by Rajapaksa since taking office have led to the present crisis. These include a tax concession to income taxpayers and value-added taxpayers, causing an unrecoverable loss in tax revenues, followed by an attempt to convert the country’s agriculture to organic farming which turned out to be a dismally executed plan. Thirdly, the government stubbornly refused to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome the mounting external sector crisis, even though it has since said they are in talks with the IMF on a plan to get the country out of the current crisis.

There has also been a political fallout from the economic crisis, with two ministers from coalition parties that were part of the government resigning from their portfolios in February after accusing the president and finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, a brother of the president, of deliberately running the country’s economy to the ground. Since then, three other state ministers have resigned, while there is growing disquiet among others in the government who are feeling the growing public wrath against them

What the government plans to do with the assistance of the IMF may be too little, too late for the people of Sri Lanka, who have spent the past few weeks standing in queues to buy gas and fuel. Power cuts have led to loss of business for many, while the tourism sector that was recovering after the COVID-19 pandemic is also taking a beating with many western countries issuing adverse travel advisories for Sri Lanka citing social unrest, shortages and system breakdowns.

The 72-year-old president, who was voted to office largely by the majority Sinhala-Buddhist population, has seen his popularity dwindle at a faster pace than any other Sri Lankan leader in the past. A former army officer who took up US citizenship and returned to Sri Lanka in 2005 to take up office as the county’s defence secretary in the government led by his older brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, is widely credited with giving leadership to the military campaign that resulted in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. He rode to power by appeasing the Sinhala majority who make up around 75% of the country’s 22 million population, while alienating the Tamil and Muslim minorities. But 2.5 years into his term in office, some of his fiercest supporters have turned into his worst critics.

S. Sunil, who makes a living by mowing lawns, was among the 6.9 million Sri Lankans who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a man he trusted to put the country on the right track. Today he can barely make a living, spending hours in a queue at the fuel station to buy petrol to operate the grass cutter. “I feel like cutting off my hand for marking the ballot paper in this man’s favour. We have not seen a worse time in this country,” he said.

Similarly, R. A. Ranjith, a one-time Rajapaksa loyalist, is a trishaw driver who has spent countless hours waiting for petrol. “My income has dropped drastically as I have to spend time waiting in queues to get petrol. We had high hopes in this president but he has turned out to be worse than all the others,” he says.

By declaring a state of emergency and a curfew to stifle public dissent, Gotabaya Rajapaksa will not win any supporters. People in several cities have already defied the curfew and taken to the streets in protest, with spontaneous acts of resistance seen in many places.

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This story first appeared in www.ft.lk

Sandya Eknaligoda is very much the public face representative of thousands of Sri Lankan women who have had a loved one taken away from them in the most cruel manner. She came to the limelight over a decade ago as the wife of cartoonist/writer Pregeeth Eknaligoda, who disappeared on 24 January 2010 and has remained a visible figure over the past 12 years speaking up for herself and on behalf of families of missing persons.

She has faced threats, being targeted by social media trolls, labelled an LTTE supporter and a poster child for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO)s but through it all Sandya had remained resolute. Last month as she marked the 12th anniversary of her husband’s disappearance, Sandya demonstrated her resolve to draw attention to her plight and this she did in her own unconventional way by making a vow to the Hindu Goddess Kali by shaving her head and swapping the white Kandyan sari she’s worn publicly since Prageeth’s disappearance for a black one.

“What are the options left for a woman engaged in a lone struggle to get justice for her husband who is a victim of enforced disappearance? The options are limited. Kali is a powerful goddess and I have chosen to draw strength from her as I mark the 12th anniversary since Prageeth went missing,” she said in an interview with the Daily FT.

Her seeking divine intervention for worldly problems has been frowned upon by some and some have questioned the reasoning behind such actions, but Sandya is not deterred by her critics.

“I have turned to religion from time to time in the past 12 years as it is one of the few options still left for me. I want to be one step ahead of those who attempt to undermine my work seeking justice for Prageeth and I am determined to be a constant thorn in the side of those in high political office and others who were connected to my husband’s disappearance. I know they fear my actions,” she said.

Prageeth Eknaligoda, who was 50 years old at the time he disappeared, had attracted controversy in his lifetime given his no holds barred cartoons depicting the apathy of leading political figures in the country, members of the clergy and the judiciary in addressing social injustices. He was also an equally candid writer questioning conventional ideas and tolerance for injustice in society. On the outer wall of their modest home in a Colombo suburb, Sandya has hung the framed copies of his cartoons, so they are more visible and are a constant reminder of the ills that plague the country.

In addition to his work as a cartoonist and writer, Prageeth was dabbling in politics at the time of his disappearance. He had supported the campaign of the common opposition candidate for the 2010 presidential poll, the former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka and it was for a connected religious ceremony that he left home on that fateful day.

The details of that morning he left the house they had shared for over 15 years since their marriage are well-etched in her mind. “There was a bodhi pooja at the Kelaniya Temple to wind up the election campaign and that morning Prageeth wanted a white shirt to wear. As he could not find one, I gave him the white shirt I had got forour older son. He put it on quipping with some pride that the boy was all grown up and both father and son could wear the same shirt. Being chronically ill with diabetes, Prageeth had to use insulin regularly. It was Sandya who injected him with the insulin before he left the house that day, never to return.

The writing had been on the wall that there was imminent threat to Prageeth’s life as he had been abducted in November 2009, detained for a few hours and dropped off at a bus stand near their home after being told by his captors he was picked up due to mistaken identity.

“Prageeth knew he was under surveillance after his abduction in 2009. He had heard from a close contact his name was on a hit list and felt that exaggerated claims of him being anti-government or of him being a threat to those in power were being relayed to the authorities and hence feared some harm could come to him,” Sandya said.

Her worst fears came true on that day in late January when Prageeth failed to return home and his phone stopped ringing.

Between 2010 to 2015, Sandya had little information on what had befallen Prageeth. She talked to people who knew him to get as such details as possible of where he was last seen, lodged a missing persons complaint with the Police but no answers were forthcoming from the authorities. Undeterred, with her two young sons by her side, Sandya began her struggle with the support of human rights organisations and activists.

The first glimmer of hope emerged in 2015 with the change in Government and for the first time those responsible for Prageeth’s disappearance were identified and legal measures initiated.

“Till 2015 we did not have any answer at all. All we heard were falsified stories being spread for public consumption. People were told Prageeth was hiding in France by some and that he was seen in Dubai by others. We got a chance at least to find some answers due to the change in government but more could have been done in the five years of the previous government to punish the culprits,” she said.

The failure for concrete and swift action to deal with cases such as Prageeth’s has meant the little progress made in the investigation have begun to be rolled back with witnesses retracting their evidence and suspects being let off the hook due to lack of evidence in the past two years. This has put Sandya back to square one in her efforts to get justice for Prageeth.

Her constant run in with those in political power and government authorities has opened her eyes to some home truths. “One thing I know for sure is that when it comes to political crimes, all political groups work together, they protect each other. Any citizen in this country who values human rights has to think how to build a just society that upholds the law because injustices can happen to anyone,” she said.

Another reality that has set in for Sandya is that in the absence of a commitment by the state to address the issue of missing persons, people are left to fight their own battles unlike in countries like Argentina where collective action by citizens, largely women, has resulted in progress for those seeking justice for thousands who disappeared.

“I feel that the mindset of many Sri Lankans is defeatist. I have many people ask me, ‘Why do you want to hit your head against a rock?’,” thus questioning my sanity in talking about powerful forces but if I don’t do what I am doing I will never get justice for Prageeth. Even those who are my biggest detractors cannot wish me away anymore because I have been consistent in my efforts.”

Despite the adversities she has faced, Sandya continues to have faith in the judiciary of the country. “The judiciary is the last resort for any one of us and I have faith in the system. What has to be questioned by all citizens is the undue influence of the executive on the functioning of the judiciary.”

Her goal is to see those responsible for her husband’s disappearance get the maximum punishment possible under the law for the crimes they have committed but she does not advocate the death penalty for them. “I want their lies exposed but I am opposed to the death penalty. No one should get the death sentence for any crime.”

By now Sandaya and her sons have resigned themselves to the fact that Prageeth will never return alive, but she has refused to accept a death certificate in her husband’s name or conduct the last rites as per Buddhist practice by offering pansakoola. “What those who make people disappear should know is that their cowardly actions take away from us the right to conduct the last rites of our loved ones. It is the only way we can find closure. I will conduct Prageeth’s last rites only when they tell me where the remains of my husband are and hand them over to me.”

Sandya draws strength to continue her struggle from her sons who were 15 and 12 years at the time Prageeth disappeared. “My older son taught me how to use a computer and use the internet after Prageeth disappeared. We work as a team and now as grown-up young men they continue to stand by me.”

But she still finds her biggest strength in the memory of her husband. “I draw my strength from Prageeth. With my campaign, I keep him alive every day. He may not be there physically but in my determination to seek justice for him, I keep him alive, and I will continue to do so till justice is meted out. Some may escape the long arms of the law, but the law of nature finally catches up with everyone.”

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