Sri Lanka on tenterhooks as President flees to Male

The embattled leader fled Sri Lanka and arrived in the Maldives on early Wednesday, two days after his youngest brother, Basil Rajapaksa, was blocked from boarding an Emirates flight to Dubai.

Published on: Jul 13, 2022, 09:31:49 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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After President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did the “Ashraf Ghani” act and fled to Male leaving the island nation in economic chaos, more violence is feared in Sri Lanka today as Left-backed protestors will mount more pressure on streets to bring about a political change.

While there are six candidates in the reckoning for the post of Sri Lankan president through Parliament vote on July 19, none of them have a majority or even the will to take on the leadership of the troubled nation. The worst-case scenario will be if former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is considered very close to the disgraced Rajapaksas, becomes a consensus candidate as he apparently has the backing of the West.

Also Read| Sri Lanka crisis: Youth dies during protest outside PM's office in Colombo

Even as Sri Lanka today is a bankrupt nation with food and fuel crisis, Gotabaya spent his entire Tuesday trying to secure a visa to United States but to no avail. Gotabaya had renounced his US citizenship to become President of Sri Lanka. He even tried to send feelers to India but, again, to no avail as New Delhi is with the people of Sri Lanka.

It is understood that Gotabaya, despite international counsel to stay put, left with family in the dead of Tuesday night and reached Male after an hour flight in a Sri Lankan Air Force medium lift Russian AN-32 plane. He was received by Speaker Mohammed Nasheed, who himself had fled to Sri Lanka in 2012, at the airport as Gotabaya is officially still the President of Sri Lanka. He is said to have sent a letter of his resignation as President to the Parliament Speaker before he left Colombo. The Speaker is also close to the Rajapaksas.

Also Read| Lankan military appeals for 'political resolution' amid massive anti-govt stir

With Gotabaya out of Sri Lanka, the protestors will mount pressure on the immigration authorities on not allowing the Rajapaksa clan led by former prime minister Mahinda to escape. Considered close to China, Mahinda is still under military protection in Colombo as is his youngest brother, Basil. Contrary to media reports, it was former foreign minister Basil who was blocked by the protestors from escaping to Dubai via Emirates flight on Monday night.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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