Gota doesn’t want to go. The signs are really clear, “Gota Go Home” is written on many signs that demonstrators are angrily raising in the air on Friday evening in front of the residence of the President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. To do this, they call out “Gota – Hora” in Sinhala, “Gota – thief”. When the light is switched off, shortly after 8 p.m., they become even louder. The five-million metropolis of Colombo lies in darkness around them. There is hardly a stronger symbol for bankruptcy. The country has run out of juice.
“We’ve given up going to the government,” says Dr. Vasan Ratnasingam, 37, spokesman for the United Doctors’ Organization in Sri Lanka, “we need help now, from doctors abroad, from emigrants who are donating.” Ratnasingam heads some 20,000 medical professionals across the country, and his office is in an unadorned house in a residential area. A fan whines softly as it shifts the hot air. It’s Saturday noon, but the pediatric surgeon is never free at the moment. “There’s already a shortage of medication for heart attack patients,” he explains. Insulin and other drugs that patients regularly depend on have also become 30 to 40 percent more expensive, “soon we won’t be able to get any more.” In between, Ratnasingam has to go to his smartphone again and again. Mal calls the hospital because their advice is needed. Then it’s the turn of an aid organization that asks how and what you can donate. “Please send medication, send material, don’t send money. We don’t know where it ends up.”
The power cuts, the lack of fuel, the queues in front of the gas stations, all of this has been in the press in recent days, but the real catastrophe is piling up behind it, in doctors’ surgeries and hospitals across the country. “We survived Covid without the health system collapsing. We are proud of our qualified doctors. The infant mortality rate is comparable to that in Europe and the USA. But if we don’t do something now, people will die here very soon a lot of people because the government has failed and now wants to cover it up.”
Top post for the presidential family
The Doctors Organization is a very powerful association in Sri Lanka. But when Vasan Ratnasingam went to the Ministry of Health last week to warn, he didn’t even get a response. 41 members of the old government left the coalition last week, and the finance minister was changed twice within a week. In fact, nobody currently knows whether there is still an active health minister in Sri Lanka. Only President Rajapaksa is still clinging to power.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 72, whom everyone just calls Gota, has ruled the country since 2019. After his election, he concentrated power with himself and his relatives. His brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was elected Prime Minister. Five other family members received senior posts, including Chamal Rajapaksa, who took over the Ministry of Irrigation. His nephew Namal Rajapaksa became sports minister but resigned last week, as did finance minister Basil Rajapaksa.
Demonstrations will resume on Saturday, this time at Galle Face Green, Colombo’s waterfront. In order to stifle the protests, the government declared a state of emergency last weekend. Demonstrators were dispersed with water cannons and tear gas, and activists and journalists were arrested.
Hundreds of demonstrations across the country
“These people have been robbing our country since independence in 1948,” shouts Lahiru Weerasekara, 32, through the cacophony of horns and anti-gota chants. Weeresekara is an artist who is now politically involved in the still small Green Party. “225 against 22 million” is the motto of the big demonstration, 225 parliamentarians against 22 million inhabitants. Weerasekara and his group, which mainly consists of painters, musicians and actors, have painted white stripes under their eyes as a symbol of enlightenment. “They all have to step back,” he says, “we, the people, have to take power .” Most of the approximately 2,000 protesters here are as young as he is or younger. It’s mostly students, you can see that on their T-shirts, the computer scientists have printed “Gaming is not a crime” on it. They don’t care that the demos were banned, even less that it’s starting to rain. Anger keeps her awake. They stay on the waterfront all night, even though the group was rained down on Sunday morning.
There are now more than 300 small demonstrations every day across the country. Some small, some large, all coordinated with each other. Such a challenge to the Rajapaksa regime would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. The President found broad support among the Sinhala Buddhist majority. Gotabaya Rajapaksa motivated his constituents in 2019 by making it clear that he would treat them, the majority, better than Tamils or Muslims. Just like other populists are doing around the world.
Then the pandemic came and magnified his wrong decisions to the point of absurdity. A tax cut promised to voters was meant to boost trade, but lockdowns stalled it. Agricultural reform drove up food prices. Tourism collapsed, as did exports. Workers abroad could no longer send money home. Now the state is virtually insolvent.
The Sri Lankan rupee continues to plummet
But despite growing public anger and calls for his resignation, even from former members of his own governing coalition, Gotabaya Rajapaksa reiterated late last week that he had no intention of stepping down. In a parliamentary debate, he stressed that the crisis was not his fault but was due to global factors over which he had no control. “This is just the beginning,” warned parliament speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. “The food, gas and electricity shortages will get worse. There will be acute food shortages and hunger.” The Sri Lankan rupee continues to plummet and has risen, according to the news outlet Reuters has become the currency that is currently the world’s worst valued. Government bonds denominated in dollars are falling and the stock market is down another percentage point every day the market opens.
In the meantime, even the Buddhist monks, previously the core target group of Rajapaksa propaganda, are calling on the demonstrations to stop supporting the president. Same again at the weekend. The access roads are heavily secured at the harbour, which begins directly behind the Galle Face Green. 37,000 tons of diesel arrived from India on Thursday and Friday. The credit line was extended at short notice so that the acute emergency situation could be ended. But the fuel will only last until the end of April, if at all.
Police officers and soldiers secure the gas station
At the “Lanka Filling Station” in Borella, Colombo’s largest suburb, buses, diesel SUVs and even a large tractor are jammed in the heat. They’re standing down the road, around the next bend, on and on, as far as you can see. A tanker truck has just arrived at the gas station and is pumping out its delivery. The line advances vehicle by vehicle, the drivers have been waiting for hours. Two police officers monitor that there are no arguments. Who was first, how many extra canisters is everyone allowed to fill up to a full tank?
Plastic spare canisters are stacked next to the vehicles. “Everyone gets as much as they like,” says the gas station operator, who doesn’t want to read his name in the newspaper. But the 6,600 liters that he received are gone in two hours. “It used to last a month.” He sits in a barred shack in his gas station and does the billing. Two soldiers with machine guns stand by and ensure that everything remains peaceful. People have started bunkering, they don’t believe that it can get any better with Gotabaya Rajapaksa.