 |
| Temple Trees, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Photo by Jack Moore/The National. |
In October 2018, Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena decided to get rid of his "extremely liberal" prime minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe, and replace him with his own predecessor as president, the authoritarian Mahinda Rajapaksa, a man with a reputation as a Sinhalese "ethno-nationalist populist" involved in war crimes against the Tamil insurgents during the Civil war and blatant corruption during his political career (the corruption was a big theme of the presidential campaign in which Sirisena defeated him, which made Sirisena's choosing Rajapaksa as PM seem particularly odd). The move was blatantly unconstitutional, since Wickramasinghe hadn't lost his parliamentary majority, and launched a seven-week constitutional crisis, with Wickramasinghe refusing to move out of the PM's residence, known as Temple Trees, and his partisans including numerous Buddhist monks occupying the grounds, massive street demonstrations from both sides, MPs throwing chairs and chili powder at the Speaker, and at last
Member of Parliament Range Bangara released an audio recording of a call that substantiated rumors that Rajapaksa’s allies were offering bribes of up to $2.8 million in exchange for political support.
When the call went viral on social media, the political tide began turning against Rajapaksa, according to Sanjana Hattotuwa, a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a local think tank.
“The scrutiny of the bribes was a severe embarrassment. Nobody could have taken the money after that and survived politically,” he said.
