Occupy Temple Trees’: Sri Lanka’s Disgruntlement Towards Neo-Elites Is On Cards Next – Analysis

Abstract

Amidst an economic crisis, Sri Lankan people stormed into and occupied the President’s House and the Temple Trees, the palatial palaces of the President and the Prime Minister, respectively, forcing both to resign, resulting in a political crisis. Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and is still on the run hoping for political asylum, whereas Ranil Wickremasinghe, the former prime minister, has been appointed as an interim president as the opposition parties are figuring the way out. The experiences from the previous decade’s Sri Lankan politics suggest the reasons as more political than economic.

The economic crisis results from a deep political decay that has engrossed its polity. The impression we obtain from the protest sites is an amalgamation of the Sri Lankan population transcending class, caste, or ethnic diversity to rightfully reclaim a democratic Sri Lanka of the people, for the people, and by the people. Though the people’s fury right now is an expression of their discontentment towards the Rajapaksa dynasty for ruining Sri Lanka’s stability through corruption and reckless decision-making, it offers a vivid signal to the neo-elites for their comradery that facilitated such a crisis.

The Lankan political system was engulfed in a severe systemic and legitimacy crisis due to the Tamil insurgency, which was followed by thirty years long civil war which ended in 2009. The Rajapaksa brothers were celebrated as war heroes in the post-civil war Sri Lanka as they led the war from the frontline, ensuring the complete elimination of the LTTE. The heroic image enabled the Rajapaksas to establish unequivocal authority over Sri Lanka by encashing Sinhala majoritarianism wrapped in populism. However, the Rajapaksa regime facilitated the rise of neo-elites who were quite distinct from their predecessors and engaged in conditioning the society with a new elite culture that was more damaging to the island’s structural integrity and institutional stability.