Hurdles aplenty as Rajapaksas scramble for getaway plan

Pictures of the staff at the immigration counter at Katunayake airbase in Colombo refusing to exit stamp the Rajapaksas’ passports went viral

There’s a closely guarded back gate to the President’s House on Galle Face that leads to Naval Headquarters, which only the Sri Lankan security forces have access to.

Seconds before mobs broke the first barrier on that fateful Saturday and swarmed into the house that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had moved into only months ago after angry crowds laid siege to his sprawling Mirihana home, he was whisked away from the upper floor by a group of military commandos through a secure iron door and out that back gate.

Driven to Colombo Port, he was taken to a naval vessel, the Sri Lanka Naval Ship (SLNS) Gajabahu, an ‘Advanced Offshore Patrol Craft’ that once belonged to the United States Coast Guard.

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The ship, patrolling close to Colombo’s waters for several days, sailed out with the VVIP guest on board, but it stayed within Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, with the Indian Navy and authorities in the Maldives kept on full alert.

Three months after the protests began, ‘Operation Rescue Gota’ had been set in motion.

On Saturday, as the world remained riveted by images of thousands of protesters descending on President’s House -- rifling through his personal effects, poking fun at his torn undergarments and finding a stash of $65,000 in newly minted currency notes -- and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s home bearing the brunt of their fury, it was from SLNS Gajabahu that Gota began calling the leaders of countries that he thought would have his back.

In Delhi, a former cohort of Wickremesinghe, who grew close to the Rajapaksas, the present Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Milinda Moraguda, is reported to have worked the phones to get Delhi to give both Gota and Basil permission to fly in on a special Antonov AN32 aircraft and take refuge in the Indian capital before they caught connecting flights to the United States.

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Basil has dual US-Sri Lankan nationality, while Gota’s family have homes in the US. Maldives and Singapore were similarly approached. Gota’s staff also bought tickets on a Sri Lankan Airlines flight on Monday to Kochi, as well as on an Etihad flight and an Emirates flight to Dubai.

As rumours swirled in Colombo that Delhi was lukewarm to the proposal of giving the brothers a free pass, Gota’s getaway plan was set to unravel further.

Pictures of the staff at the immigration counter at Katunayake airbase in Colombo refusing to exit stamp the Rajapaksas’ passports late on Monday night, went viral. One insider spoke of how the President stayed inside the VVIP lounge, fuming, sending one emissary after another, but to no avail. Worried about having to face angry passengers who could block his exit, Gota dispatched Basil to plead their cause, but he too was unable to persuade the 15-man immigration staff, who quickly closed the counter. The immigration staff at the adjoining Bandaranaike International Airport were equally unhelpful, said the insider.

Why Gotabaya took so long to see the writing on the wall and had not crafted an exit strategy before matters came to a head on Saturday, almost a hundred days after the protests began, remains a mystery.

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On the preceding Tuesday, provoked into attending parliament by an opposition leader who publicly questioned the President’s no-show, Gota had come face to face with a string of opposition parliamentarians holding up placards in the well of the House, echoing the cry on the streets “Gota, go home”.

Embarrassed and angry, he had looked accusingly at Wickremesinghe. But with not a single lawmaker from his own party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Perumana, standing up to defend him, it must have finally hit home that supports even within his own party had dried up. Critics say that despite all the signs that said otherwise, he believed he would be able to continue in office for the remainder of his term.

But a series of fresh blunders -- his appointment of a casino owner as the new investment promotion minister, and accusations that another hand-picked aide had pressed a Japanese corporation involved in constructing the Colombo port terminal project for a bribe -- only went to reinforce the perception and public anger, that Gota continued to call the shots, with Wickremesinghe looking the other way. The protesters, who had remained largely peaceful, ran out of patience on Saturday. The Catholic clergy, the Buddhist monks, and the student leaders who had organised the protests could do nothing as calls went out for people to converge on the capital and insist for an end to the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe experiment.

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Analysts put Gota’s hubris down to his misplaced belief that in sacrificing his once far more popular brother Mahinda, and other members of his family, he had bought some breathing space. The blame for the mismanagement of the economy, he felt, would be borne by the six-time former prime minister and opposition leader Wickremesinghe, whom he had co-opted to undertake a clean-up that an overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans said was nothing more than a cover-up. Unused to governance, and pushy by nature, he brooked no criticism even when it was clear that it was his mishandling of the economy -- with an ill-advised tax regime that benefited his cronies, and a series of other blunders -- that had led to a stop in the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans abroad and the resultant foreign exchange crisis.

Secure in the belief that his larger-than-life image as the man who felled the LTTE and its leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran would hold him in good stead, he had another card up his sleeve -- his hold over the armed forces, and the unswerving loyalty of his hand-picked army chief Gen. Shavendra Silva and dozens of officers he rewarded with sinecures as heads of government-run corporations. That it contributed in no small measure to the people’s anger against him is another matter.

Wickremesinghe’s bid to obtain a debt restructuring and bail-out deal from the IMF hit a snag, with the IMF refusing last week to sign off on the plan.

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The cold shoulder from China after Gota refused to clear a ship carrying fertilizers and scrapped the deal with Beijing to develop three islands in the north of the country, added to the financial crunch. India’s currency swaps, credit lines for essentials and loan deferments could only go this far.

It all came to a head-on Saturday. Alerted by security as early as Thursday, Gota did attempt to throw a ring around the capital by imposing a curfew and stopping all trains coming into Colombo. But within hours of the curfew, authorities lifted it, while railway officials refused to stop the trains, perhaps having gauged the public mood: One school teacher had reportedly spent over a lakh of rupees to buy tickets for friends and relatives to take the train from Kandy to Colombo.

Calls for accountability are growing ever louder, with the Bar Association expected to approach the United Nations to track the illegal monies that the Rajapaksas are alleged to have stashed abroad, particularly in the Gulf and Uganda, Africa.

Now that he will, in all likelihood, accede to public pressure to step down as President, a new interim government is set to be put in place in the coming days. The opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya has already nominated its leader Sajith Premadasa for interim President, but it is clear that more than political appointees, this interim government must be peopled with economists and political voices of some integrity.

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With Transparency International Sri Lanka filed a petition to prevent Gotabaya, his brothers Mahinda and Basil, Wickremesinghe as well as the Central Bank Governor and new Minister of Finance S R Attygalle from travelling abroad, Sri Lanka could face further turmoil.

There are unconfirmed reports of locals marching to the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the so-called “world’s emptiest airport”, which was built in the Rajapaksas’ home district of Hambantota, to stop their private jet from taking off. The jet with 19 passengers on board -- and limited fuel – was set for Uganda but has now been diverted to Hingurakgoda airforce base, the reports say.

As rumours swirl of a handover to the military, amid reports that they are still negotiating for an exit, the Rajapaksas may find they have finally been grounded.

(The writer is a senior journalist)