Sri Lanka: Former president returns home

Sri Lanka | 08 September 2022

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been forced to flee the country on 13 July 2022, leading to an odyssey of temporary stays in the Maldives, Singapore and Thailand. Now he has returned to Sri Lanka.

After travelling through various Asian countries having been ousted from office in July 2022, the former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, returned to Sri Lanka on 3 September 2022 (Channel News Asia, 3 September 2022).

World Watch Research analyst Thomas Muller explains: “The Rajapaksa family had been ousted by a civilian protest movement, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been forced to flee the country on 13 July, leading to an odyssey of temporary stays in the Maldives, Singapore and Thailand. His return will not sit well with millions of citizens suffering from the dire economic, social and financial situation, for which his (and previous) governments are entirely responsible. However, the acting president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, cracked down hard on the protest movement and had several of its leaders arrested, which shows that the Rajapaksa family still wields significant influence.”

Thomas Muller continues: “Whether or not a preliminary bailout of around 2.9 billion USD from the IMF (DW, 1 September 2022) will be sufficient to ease the woes of the Sri Lankan people remains to be seen. According to the IMF, Sri Lanka agreed to increase revenue, remove subsidies, ensure a flexible exchange rate and rebuild its foreign reserves. All measures will be strongly felt by the people, so more unrest and more crackdowns are to be expected. As a research paper entitled ‘Patterns and risks of religious violence against Christians’ in Sri Lanka indicated, in the period October 2020 – October 2021, the level of discrimination and violence against the Christian minority remained high (Verité Research, 28 February 2022).”