Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed to the country and protestors to have “patience” and said that the crisis-hit country was losing precious dollars because of protests on the streets while acknowledging the suffering of the people and assuring that the government was taking measures to mitigate the problems. He also warned the youth of the danger of undermining parliamentary democracy, referring to past “dark days” of violent past. 
 
“Every second you protest on the streets, the country loses opportunities to receive potential dollars,” Rajapaksa said on Monday in his address to the nation, the first since the protests began a few weeks back. The government, he said, is embarking on an enormous program to overcome the crisis the country faces today.

Sri Lanka, gripped by a severe foreign exchange crisis, has been facing a crippling shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. Thousands of protestors across the country are on the streets, demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Once considered the country’s most influential family, the ruling Rajapaksa clan is now at the center of people’s anger. ‘GoHomeGota’ and ‘Rajapaksas must quit’ are among the most common slogans in the protest rallies, virtually blurring, at least temporarily, the country’s centuries-old fault line, the ethnic divide between Tamils and Sinhala Buddhists. 

“I understand the fatigue of the people who have been queuing for days in fuel queues and empathize with the pain of citizens queuing up for gas. I feel that pain,” Prime Minister Rajapaksa said, adding  “We will take the responsibility to resolve the economic issue, in the same way, we ended the 30-year war [waged by LTTE separatists].”

The severity of the crisis seems to have resulted in a complete loss of public confidence—especially among the younger generation— in the country’s political order. 

Recently, there has been a growing demand for the resignation of all lawmakers in parliament. Rajapaksa, in his speech, gave a clear and pointed warning of the potential “danger” of attempts to undermine parliamentary democracy, referring to the “darkest period” of 1989-90 and the early 70s. 

“The chant of ‘No 225 in Parliament’ echoes through the streets. That immediately translates into a rejection of this democratic system…..We have witnessed the tragedy of bombing parliament and attempts to destroy it. The blood of our youth flowed along the streets as those parties rejected democracy,” Rajapaksa said, reminding the youth of the insurrection of 1987-1989, which cost roughly 60,000 lives across the nation. 

He also referred to the insurgency–later turned into a full-blown civil war that ended three decades later in 2009— in the country’s north which was begun by Tamil separatist insurgents who rejected parliamentary democracy and targeted and killed parliamentarians. 

“Your parents will attest to the bloody past that shrouded our history, Rajapaksa said, addressing the youth, who emerged as the most vocal protestors with somewhat radical demands.

“I urge our sons and daughters this evening to consider this carefully and protect our nation from once again slipping into a time as dark as that in our history, through these actions,” the embattled prime minister appealed. 

“We [the ruling family] can bear it,” he said, referring to the ongoing humiliation and insulted target at the Rajapaksas family amid the ongoing protests, which, he added, was nothing in comparison to the struggle they undertook to end the country’s three-decade-long civil war. 

The Sri Lankan government appears on edge. This is at least what Mahinda Rajapaksa’s speech suggests, which contains multiple references to “dark days" of the past. 

Whether these references to the violent past are being used to scare the angry public into toning down the intensity of protests towards the 'first family', or the Rajapaksa government,  and fears of a complete collapse of the political order is something only time will tell. 

(SAM)