Saturday, July 9, 2022

This is what happens when the food runs out.

Angry citizens in their thousands storm the presidential palace in Sri Lanka. This is what happens when the food runs out.

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Sri Lanka Live Updates: Political Leaders Say They Ask President to Step Down

The request came as protesters entered his residence and office, and thousands ​more ​descended on the capital to register their fury over his government’s inability to address a crippling economic crisis.

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The president faces internal pressure to resign, and the prime minister signals he will quit.

ImageProtesters at the residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka in the capital, Colombo, on Saturday.
Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The president faces internal pressure to resign, and the prime minister signals he will quit.

ImageProtesters at the residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka in the capital, Colombo, on Saturday.
Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated politics in Sri Lanka for much of the past two decades, was asked by the country’s political leaders to step down on Saturday after months of protests accusing him of running the island nation’s economy into the ground through corruption and mismanagement.

The call for Mr. Rajapaksa’s departure was confirmed by two lawmakers and came after protesters entered the president’s residence and his office, ​and thousands ​more ​descended on the capital, Colombo, to register their growing fury over his government’s inability to address a crippling economic crisis.

Afterward, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office only in May and was also facing demands to resign, signaled that he would step down.

Sri Lanka has run out of foreign-exchange reserves for imports of essential items like fuel and medicine, and the United Nations has warned that more than a quarter of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people are at risk of food shortages.

The economic crisis is a major setback for the island nation that was still grappling with the legacy of a bloody three-decade civil war. That conflict, between the government and the Tamil Tiger insurgents who had taken up the cause of discrimination against the ethnic minority Tamils, ended in 2009. But many of its underlying causes have remained, with the Rajapaksa family continuing to cater to the majority Buddhist Sinhalese.

At least 42 people have been injured in clashes with security forces in the city, health officials said, after the police used tear gas and water cannons against protesters and fired shots into the air to try to disperse them.

Local news media showed footage of protesters breaching parts of the presidential residence as well as his secretariat, a separate building that houses his office.

Videos on social media showed protesters jumping into the pool in Mr. Rajapaksa’s residence, resting in bedrooms, and frying snacks in the presidential kitchen.

“I came here today to send the president home,” said Wasantha Kiruwaththuduwa, 50, who had walked 10 miles to join the protest. “Now the president must resign. If he wants peace to prevail, he must step down.”

The whereabouts of Mr. Rajapaksa was not clear.

Protests have been taking place for months, but the demonstration on Saturday appeared to be one of the biggest yet, even though the authorities had imposed an overnight curfew and halted trains in an attempt to stop people from reaching the capital.

On Friday, the United Nations urged the “Sri Lankan authorities to show restraint in the policing of assemblies and ensure every necessary effort to prevent violence.”

— Skandha Gunasekara and Mujib Mashal

Protests have carried on for months in the face of economic hardship.

Image
Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

The political crisis in Sri Lanka escalated earlier this year as the devastating consequences of the government’s mismanagement of the economy started to hit harder than ever, with fuel running out and food running short.

As protests intensified in the spring, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa tried to offer incremental compromises by forcing some members of his cabinet to resign while shuffling others to new roles.

But protesters wanted the whole government to go, and the president was struggling to convince his elder brother and prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to give up his seat.

A protest camp developed along the scenic Galle Face at the heart of the capital, with protesters insisting they would not go home until the Rajapaksas left the government.

In May, Mahinda Rajapaksa was forced out as prime minister, but only after a large group of his supporters marched out of his residence and attacked the camps of peaceful protesters.

The clashes unleashed a wave of violence and vandalism across the country, raising fears that the country could break into outright anarchy., and the prime minister fled to a military base in the middle of the night.

The president has held firm, hoping he could weather the protests and complete the remaining two years of his term. He appointed a new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has tried to raise financial aid from allied countries and work with the International Monetary Fund to restructure the country’s immense foreign debt.

But the protests continued. On Saturday, the huge numbers of people descending on the capital, Colombo were a clear sign that none of Mr. Rajapaksa’s moves were buying him much time.

The daily reality of people’s lives has grown only harsher in recent weeks, with shortages of fuel and essential medicine. Citizens have lined up at gas stations, often in vain. Local news media have reported the deaths of at least 15 people in fuel lines, from heatstroke and other causes, since the beginning of the crisis.

— Mujib Mashal

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Clockwise from left, an empty cricket stadium, a protest over rising prices, a barely used airport and lining up for fuel. Credit...Photographs by Atul Loke for The New York Times

The international airport, built a decade ago in the name of Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksa family, is devoid of passenger flights, its staff lingering idly in the cafe. The cricket stadium, also constructed on the family’s orders, has had only a few international matches and is so remote that arriving teams face the risk of wildlife attacks.

And then there is the port, the biggest of all the monuments to the Rajapaksas, a white elephant visited almost as much by actual elephants as by cargo ships before it was handed over to China in the face of impossible debt.

As Sri Lanka grapples with its worst ever economic crisis, with people waiting hours for fuel and cutting back on food, nowhere is the reckless spending that helped wreck the country more visible than in Hambantota, the Rajapaksa family’s home district in the south.

This enormous waste — more than $1 billion spent on the port, $250 million on the airport, nearly $200 million on underused roads and bridges, and millions more (figures vary) on the cricket stadium — made Hambantota a throne to the vanity of a political dynasty that increasingly ran the country as a family business.

The frenzy of building on borrowed money, with little hope of immediate return on the investment, was in essence the payoff for the family’s triumphant declaration of victory in 2009 after a three-decade-long civil war against the Tamil Tigers, an insurgency that had taken up the cause of discrimination against the ethnic Tamil minority.

With Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president, then at the peak of his powers, he did what many nationalist strongmen do: erect tributes to himself.

— Mujib Mashal, Skandha Gunasekara and Atul Loke

LAVISH SPENDING
Read the full article on the two faces of a ruined Sri Lanka.
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