Sunday Times 2
A President wronged by history
View(s):- Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa celebrates his 74TH birthday on June 20
By Sugeeshwara Bandara
The day before, the Inter-University Student Federation (IUSF) staged a demonstration in front of the house.
On July 9, at 6.32 a.m., I got a call from the president. The previous night, I left President’s House for my home well past midnight. However, I made it a point to be back before 6 a.m.
The president wasn’t sure where I was. That’s why the call.
He asked, “Sugeeshwara, where are you?”
I replied that I was already in the President’s House.
July 9, is anyhow an important day in history.
On July 9, 1776, the United States’ founding father George Washington ordered his men to read out the US Declaration of Independence to the army of the United Colonies. The army of the United Colonies, also known as the Continental Army, was formed during the American Revolutionary War between the Americans and the British.
In 2002, July 9 saw the birth of the African Union, the intergovernmental body that replaced the Organisation of African Unity which had been in existence since 1963.
Here in Sri Lanka, July 9 in 2022 became a day that was etched in the minds of all Sri Lankans as the day that a violent, lawless group of people laid siege to the President’s House, forcing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to vacate the building. Later, the group broke through the security barricades, entered the President’s House and caused immense damage to the building and its belongings.
The vandals’ version of the series of events has already gone to history books, both here and overseas.
However, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s version of the events is yet to be told.
With President Rajapaksa being a man of few words, what took place inside the President’s House in the run-up to his exit still remains an untold story. As somebody who was among the few individuals who remained with the President till the last minute, the series of events that took place inside the house is still imprinted in my mind.
The time was 11.21 a.m.
The din caused by the vandals protesting outside was deafening.
Those of us who were held up inside the building were pondering over the next course of action. The President’s silence was almost palpable while the screams and shouts by the miscreants continued to get intensified.
The options for us were fast running out.
Understandably the officers from the army top brass who were there were getting impatient.
“Sir, please give us orders to shoot these rioters. They cannot bully and trap a democratically elected President this way,” the officers pleaded with the President.
The President lost his composure for the first time.
“Are you mad? These are the people who voted for me and brought me to power. How can you shoot them?” an enraged president asked. In fact, the knowledge that the president would not get the forces to shoot them was the key reason behind the protestors’ decision to lay siege to the President’s House in their thousands. After all, here was a president who only used minimal force when hundreds of mobsters attacked his private residence in Mirihana. When the very same protesters started camping out in the Galle Face Green and set up a Gota-Go-Gama, he refused to give orders to dismantle the rioters’ village despite being a military man with a reputation for being a tough taskmaster.
This tolerant attitude resulted in lawbreakers jumping to the conclusion that the President would not move to punish them irrespective of the tactics they used to provoke him.
Instead of giving shooting orders to the army, the President decided to leave the premises without letting anyone get hurt. On the other hand, part of local and international media continued to attack the President calling him autocratic and dictatorial.
Political violence is long considered a means of getting group demands met. People resort to violence when there is prolonged and sharply felt frustration as a result of a general sense of deprivation. This sense of deprivation is created when there is a significant discrepancy between what people think they deserve and what they will get. The long queues for fuel and gas and the rising cost of living were creating a fertile ground not only for those with genuine grievances but also for those with parochial political motives and even some other vicious agendas too to make use of the opportunity. In fact, it was the latter that finally took control of the demonstrations in the run-up to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation.
The truth was that the country’s economy was already on the verge of collapse by the time President Gotabaya Rajapaksa assumed duties. The Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated the speed of the collapse.
One may well recall that a book with a definitive account of the impending economic crisis by a leading opposition politician made it to the shelves of bookshops in 2014. The writer attributed the looming crisis to the lack of fiscal discipline, especially the big loans and corruption of a previous regime. Later, during the Yahapalana rule, the same politician went on to explain that even the Yahapalana government was making economic blunders, thus accelerating the pace of the impending disaster. Despite this reality, many found a scapegoat in President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and blamed him for the economic crisis. One may recall that it was President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s decision to re-cultivate the long-neglected ties with India, thus doing away with the diplomatic imbalance, which finally saw India coming to the rescue of Sri Lanka in the bleakest hour of the crisis with financial assistance.
Besides, those who did not know about the president’s principles and policies continued to lump him with the family. Personality-wise, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is so very different from his brothers. He is a born loner. He does not enjoy interacting even with his own relatives. The former president likes solitude and prefers sitting in a quiet corner and reading a book to socialising.
I still remember the President’s advice to the senior military officers who were present in the house when he finally took the decision to leave the building.
“Please stay even after I have left. This is not my private property. This is state property. You should make sure that nothing here is damaged,” an emotional yet responsible president said.
Only an election could have revealed the popularity or unpopularity of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa by the time of his resignation. In the absence of such an election, those with sinister agendas emerged victorious that day. However fortunately for the country UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe rose to the occasion to minimise the damage and stabilise the country to a large extent.
As somebody who worked very closely with the former President, I only hope the truth about President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will come to light one day, vindicating him of all false charges levelled against him.
Happy Birthday President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, you certainly deserve a better place in the archives of history.
(The writer was the private secretary to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa)