Sri Lankan opposition not ready to push Rajapaksa out of power
The economic crisis-fuelled political turmoil in Sri Lanka will continue as Rajapaksas are not willing to yield power and the Opposition does not want to step in to save the public from the economic mess.
The Sri Lankan economic and political crisis is far from over, with the pressure mounting on president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign amid widespread protests. The protesters on Wednesday staged demonstrations outside the office of the chief government whip Johnston Fernando who had stated that the president won't resign in any circumstances.
People hold placards as they demand Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign during a protest near to a road leading to the parliament building in Colombo. (Reuters)
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An announcement by a prominent Buddhist monk that the Mahanayakas have also asked the government to resign has added to the pressure. The clergy, an important influencer of public opinion, has always been supportive of the Rajapaksas and if the monk’s statement is correct, it can motivate more people to join the protests. The apolitical character of the anti-government movement with participation from all sections of society, especially the educated youth and professionals, has made it more difficult for the government to handle the situation.
Such a widespread public uprising is unprecedented in Sri Lanka and its outcome is unpredictable if relief from the power, fuel and financial crises is not provided soon.
What adds more to the chaos as the opposition which has been gunning for the president, is not willing to step in and replace the Rajapaksas to save the public from the economic crisis.
In a latest development, the Asian Development Bank has projected Sri Lanka's economic growth to dip to 2.4% in 2022 and marginally improve to 2.5% in the next year. To overcome the economic crisis, Rajapaksa has appointed a team of economic and fiscal experts as Members of the Presidential Advisory Group on Multilateral Engagement and Debt Sustainability to prepare a road map to address the debt crisis. He also refused to accept the resignation of the Deputy Speaker and requested him to continue.
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Bandula Gunawardane, whose name had been proposed for Finance Minister, has not yet accepted the position. The seats of central Bank Governor and Treasury Secretary are also vacant.
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Bandula Gunawardane, whose name had been proposed for Finance Minister, has not yet accepted the position. The seats of central Bank Governor and Treasury Secretary are also vacant.
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.
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