Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the former leader of Sri Lanka, broke a long silence on Thursday ( Mar 6 ) by releasing a book in which he claimed “geopolitical rivalry” between China and other nations was to blame for his demise.
After weeks of street protests over the island world’s worst-ever financial crisis, protesters stormed Rajapaksa’s official residence in 2022, forcing him into momentary exile.
Rajapaksa defends his government’s financial policies, which led to an unprecedented international loan default and months of intense food and fuel shortages, in a self-published account of his demise, The Conspiracy.
Instead, he claimed that” Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka after 2006 introduced an element of political rivalry” that led to his overthrow.
According to Rajapaksa,” It would be incredibly stupid for anyone to declare that there was no unusual hand in the decisions made to remove me from power.”
Although Rajapaksa did not name distinct nations, the United States had in the previous repeatedly warned Sri Lanka that it was at risk of falling into a Taiwanese debt trap by signing numerous system agreements.
The 74-year-old was first flown out of Sri Lanka aboard a military plane and emailed his departure from Singapore when he was ousted, but he has since returned home.
Without providing any supporting documentation, Rajapaksa claimed that activists who took to the streets as the market came to a block in his presidency had “foreign funding.”
A seldom used convention center and airports in Rajapaksa’s town of Hambantota, which critics have criticized as white elephants, have been funded by Beijing.
With approximately 10 % of the region’s foreign debt, China is Sri Lanka’s largest single diplomatic provider.
Rajapaksa was previously praised by the Sinhala Buddhist majority for bringing an end to Sri Lanka’s much civil conflict in 2009 while serving as the country’s best defense official under the leadership of his brother Mahinda.
He won a landslide in the 2019 election, but less than three years later, as supermarket shelves sat vacant and long lines swung up at petrol stations, his reputation slowed in parallel with Sri Lanka’s market.
Economists attributed the rapid decline to Rajapaksa’s government’s misguided tax cuts, which made it unable to listen to the decline of foreign exchange reserves following the coronavirus crisis.
Kusal Perera, a social critic, claimed Rajapaksa’s demise was the result of his own poor economic management.
Due to internet hype, Perera claimed,” He was well-known as a Sinhala-Buddh leader, but he was unable to give.”
Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa’s successor, has forged a deal with the International Monetary Fund and quickly raised taxes to regain the government’s finances.