Author: TELO Admin

Sri Lanka’s opposition has rejected an invitation from the president to form a unity government, urging his resignation over the country’s worsening shortages of food, fuel and medicines.

The opposition’s demand on Monday came as anti-government protests continued throughout the country over its worst economic crisis in memory and deepening mistrust in President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s leadership.

Earlier on Monday, the president’s office said he “invites all political parties represented in the parliament to come together to accept ministerial portfolios in order to find solutions to this national crisis”.

The largest opposition political alliance – the United People’s Power or Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) – rejected the proposal.

“The people of this country want Gotabaya and the entire Rajapaksa family to go and we can’t go against the people’s will and we can’t work alongside the corrupt,” top SJB official Ranjith Madduma Bandara told The Associated Press news agency.

SJB has 54 MPs in the 225-member parliament.

The left-wing People’s Liberation Front (JVP) also responded by urging Rajapaksa and his once-popular and powerful family to immediately step down.

“He really must be a lunatic to think that opposition MPs will prop up a government that is crumbling,” JVP MP Anura Dissanayaka told reporters in Colombo.

The main minority opposition party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), joined the voices dismissing the idea.

“His offer to reconstitute the cabinet with opposition MPs is nonsensical and infuriates the people who have been demanding his resignation,” TNA MP Mathiaparanan Abraham Sumanthiran told the AFP news agency.

All 26 Cabinet ministers handed in their resignations on Sunday, after thousands of people defied a countrywide state of emergency and curfew and joined street protests to denounce the government.

Two other Rajapaksa brothers, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa and Irrigation Minister Chamal Rajapaksa, were among those who resigned, along with the prime minister’s son, Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa.

The departures cleared the way for the country’s ruling political family to seek to shore up its weakening position and attempt to stem growing public protests.

But the president has already reappointed four of the outgoing ministers – three of them to their old jobs – while replacing brother Basil Rajapaksa as finance minister with the previous justice chief. Previous ministers of foreign affairs, education and highways kept their positions.

Protests continue

On Monday, April 4, police used a water cannon to disperse protesters who marched towards the Rajapaksa family home in southern Sri Lanka demanding that the ruling family quit.

The debt-laden country, led by Rajapaksa and several members of his family since 2019, is struggling to pay for imports of fuel and other goods due to a scarcity of foreign exchange, leading to hours-long power cuts and a shortage of essentials.

The extent of the crisis became clear when the country could not pay for imports of basic supplies because of its huge debts and dwindling foreign reserves.

As protests grew and calls increased for him to step down, President Rajapaksa assumed emergency powers by decree at midnight on Friday. The government also declared a countrywide curfew, which was lifted Monday morning.

Authorities also reportedly blocked access for nearly 15 hours to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and other social media platforms that were used to organise the protests.

A small group of protestors have gathered outside President Gotabaya Rakapaksa’s son’s house in Los Angeles, USA, with protestors calling on him to call his father back home.

The protester said that President Gotabaya had to go down and his money had to come back. The protester said that people in Los Angeles are with Sri Lankans.

A massive protest is currently taking place oppsoite the Presidential Secretariat, Colombo.

Thousands of people have gathered near the President’s office chanting slogans and demanding his resignation.

A heavy police and military presence was seen in the President’s Office.

People were also protesting on Galle Face Green and several other places in Colombo against the President.

However, the President still maintains that he will not leave office due to public pressure.

The armed forces of Sri Lanka would always comply with the Constitution and the Army is no exception. The Army as a professional outfit is always prepared to provide security and protection to the State as necessary”, so said Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of the Army, General Shavendra Silva, addressing a gathering of Defence Advisers/Attaches of Sri Lanka-based High Commissions and embassies, invited to the Office of Chief of Defence Staff today (4).

The meeting was meant to keep those foreign Defence Advisers/Attaches informed of the current situation.

Captain Ian Keith Cain, Defence Adviser (Australia), Commander, M Shafil Bari, Defence Adviser, Bangladesh, Senior Colonel Wan Dong, Military, Naval and Air Attaché (China), Lieutenant Colonel Chang Qianjin, Assistant Military Naval and Air Attache, (China), Captain Vikas Sood, Defence Adviser (India), Lieutenant Colonel Punnet Sushill, Assistant Defence Adviser, (India), Colonel Homayou Ali Yari, Military Attaché, (Iran), Captain Gaku Fukaura, Defence / Security Attaché, (Japan), Colonel Ismail Naseer, Defence Adviser, (Maldives), Colonel Muhammad Safdar Khan, Defence Adviser, (Pakistan), Colonel Aleksey A Bondarev, Military, Naval & Air Attaché, (Russia), Colonel P.J Clayton, Defence Adviser, (United Kingdom) and Lieutenant Commander Richard Lister, Naval Attaché (United States of America) were present at this meeting.

It is the unfolding crisis in Pakistan and Sri Lanka which is forcing countries like Maldives, Nepal and Bangladesh to think again on Chinese infrastructure loans and being part of the BRI initiative.

During his trip to India last week, Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba informally shared a conversation about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to Kathmandu in late March. The Nepalese PM, who has an equally political and erudite wife Arzu, told the visiting Wang that his country can only accept grants from Beijing and not loans for infrastructure projects. Fact is, not a single agreement on the much-touted Belt Road Initiative (BRI) was signed during Wang’s visit to Kathmandu.

With the Chinese debt in South Asia rising from USD 4.7 billion to upwards of USD 40 billion, Nepal under Deuba chose to walk out of the debt trap of the Middle Kingdom after seeing the mounting political crisis in Beijing’s tributary state of Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With more than 10 per cent of Pakistan’s external debt owed to China, the milk and honey relationship no longer tastes sweet with the Islamic Republic descending into political chaos with all democratic institutions made vulnerable by a self-serving Prime Minister in Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi and his cronies.

The situation in Sri Lanka is no different and this time they don’t have India to blame for the country staring into an economic and political abyss with hardly any foreign reserves to buy fuel and oil. The blame squarely lies on the door of the Rajapaksa Incorporated, which brought the country under severe economic stress by taking high-interest loans from China in the name of infrastructure development. Today, the island nation is under lockdown with the public having no options but to protest the state of governance of the Rajapaksa family.

It is the unfolding crisis in Pakistan and Sri Lanka which is forcing countries like Maldives, Nepal and Bangladesh to think again on Chinese infrastructure loans and being part of the BRI initiative. It was not long ago that the Chinese ambassador to Nepal used to be the Queen Bee in Nepali politics with Maoist and Communist politicians paying obeisance to Beijing’s representative.

While it seems that Sri Lanka has realized the soup its economy is in, Pakistan has doubly complicated its economic recovery with PM Niazi plunging the country into a full-blown political crisis for his own survival. He is trying to whip up public sentiment in his support by singling out the Biden administration for covertly conspiring with the Opposition to topple his regime. As if the US has Pakistan still on its high priority at a time when the Russian President has invaded Ukraine.

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While Imran Niazi’s rant against the US may be music to Beijing’s ears, China should also be worried about the future of BRI in Pakistan and about the recovery of the multi-billion-dollar loan given to Islamabad. A weak Islamabad will give strength to fissiparous forces within Pakistan as nationalist movements are building up in Balochistan, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Given the US control on global financial institutions, both Pakistan and Sri Lanka will find it very hard to recover as the two countries had shifted loyalties to Beijing in the past two decades.

Source: Hindustan Times

The parliamentary group of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has decided to leave the government and function as an independent group in Parliament.

This was confirmed by SLFP member and State Minister Duminda Dissanayake, speaking to Ada Derana.

He said the parliamentary group of the party had convened a meeting today while the fourteen parliamentarians of the SLFP had decided to quit the government and act independently at tomorrow’s parliamentary session.

Meanwhile the state ministers Lasantha Alagiyawanna, Duminda Dissanayake and Priyankara Jayaratne have resigned from their respective ministerial portfolios.