Thousands Take to the Streets

Citizens’ movement of popular sovereignty

Poetry has been defined as ‘the spontaneous overflow of strong emotion.’ And the same could be said for sociopolitical protests.

In the first quarter of 2022 certainly, there were sufficient lapses by a government that had wobbled between arrogant ‘governance by gazette’ and misguided adventures in spurious policies based not on rational thought or scientific data; but rather, personal and political preferences, to warrant a volcanic reaction by the citizenry.

Sri Lanka had begun to suffer a series of reversals to what had taken root in November 2019 as the country’s ostensible road to prosperity – in fact, there were many who believed at the time that our island nation under the then popular president it elected with an overwhelming vote (literally) of confidence was on an incontrovertible trajectory to becoming a city state like Singapore in the foreseeable future.

As luck – or misfortune and misadventure – would have it however, the country was in a state of chaos by March 2020, a mere 29 months after former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected as Sri Lanka’s postwar chief executive officer by people who had placed inordinate faith in his ability to deliver.

On the strength of that unshakeable belief, they had given the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) government a resounding two-thirds majority in parliament.

Notwithstanding an unprecedented mandate to govern, the executive arm of government botched its escutcheon in the most egregious manner.

The ‘mistakes made’ by this all-powerful administration resulted in high prices; headline and food inflation; empty state coffers; alarmingly depleted foreign reserves; daily blackouts of up to six staggered – and staggering – hours in some places; and severe shortages of a range of commodities including essential items; as well as crippling queues for petrol, diesel, gas and kerosene, which hamstrung both domestic and national economies.

And three months into a year that had seen this government mismanage the economy to such an extent that the polity’s much vaunted food, forex, fertiliser, pharmaceutical and energy security was decimated, the people – spontaneously it was felt at first; but later, the insidious presence of politically motivated actors was exposed – declared that ‘enough was enough.’

Having exercised their franchise in hope and trust, they voted with their feet… they took to the streets in a plethora of protests that snowballed across a stricken nation.

One of the key dates in the aragalaya – the people’s protest arising from their struggles – was 9 May when state sanctioned thugs attacked the citizens’ village (Gotagogama) in Galle Face, facilitated by a cornered prime minister and cabinet, which eventually resigned en masse except their leader.

And another was 9 July – that was when an estimated one million angry but peaceful protestors (a purported million more protested elsewhere) marched on Colombo chanting “Gota, go home!”

A key demand of the protests, which had spanned the gamut from housewives clanging kitchen utensils in the suburbs to sophisticated youth making pointed statements at the iconic Independence Square, had been the summary resignation of all members of the Rajapaksa family who held public office – widely perceived as the root of all evils in Sri Lanka at the time.

The first of these landmark protests caused the resignation of then prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa while the second witnessed Sri Lanka’s president flee the island in ignominy four days later, only to announce his resignation from a sort of ‘enforced exile.’

Having exercised their franchise in hope and trust, they voted with their feet… they took to the streets in a plethora of protests that snowballed across a stricken nation