A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022
you’re not from an established
family,” said Razeen Sally, a pro-
fessor at the National University
of Singapore. “So the system is left
to established insiders who can
pillage the state.”
The second of nine children,
Mahinda was charismatic, loved
crowds and stuck close to his
younger brother, Basil, who is
considered the family’s political
strategist. Their middle brother,
Gotabaya, was always different:
aloof, politically inexperienced, a
teetotaler and vegetarian who
spent 21 years in the military. “He
would visit the ancestral home
only during New Year,” recalled
Weeratunga, their cousin who is
close to Mahinda.
The Rajapaksas ran the coun-
try like a family business during
Mahinda’s 10-year presidency,
starting in 2005. He named Gota-
baya defense secretary while Basil
and their oldest brother, Chamal,
were placed in charge of irriga-
tion and economic development.
Sri Lanka enjoyed years of
growth, fueled by a mountain of
foreign debt.
Mahinda enjoyed the adula-
tion of voters, who approved of
his bloody but decisive victory in a
26-year civil war against Ta mil
rebels and his frequent appeals to
Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.
But allegations of corruption,
including questionable deals with
Chinese state companies and offi-
cials, swirled around Mahinda.
Gotabaya was also implicated,
though to a lesser extent, and
faced scrutiny over the 2006 pur-
chase of MiG fighters from
Ukraine.
Sankhitha Gunaratne, deputy
executive director of Transparen-
cy International Sri Lanka, said
Mahinda and Basil have faced
numerous accusations, including
diverting tsunami relief aid and
using public funds to buy land,
but many cases have stalled or
been withdrawn. “The alleged Ra-
japaksa corruption is like a large
tree that provides shade to many
people,” she said.
In 2021, a leaked trove of finan-
cial documents known as the Pan-
dora Papers revealed that a niece
of the Rajapaksa brothers hadtries that controlled three-quar-
ters of the national budget and
built popular support despite al-
legations of human rights abuses
and corruption. But by 2019,
when Gotabaya became presi-
dent, the family was marred by
infighting and dysfunction that
would drive South Asia’s most
developed nation into ruin.
In interviews, current and for-
mer ministers, foreign diplomats
and Rajapaksa confidants, some
of whom spoke for the first time as
they saw the family splinter, said
Gotabaya and Mahinda, and their
respective factions, clashed over
ministerial appointments and ag-
ricultural policies, investment
deals and political favors. As the
economy went into free fall this
year, Mahinda, backed by several
Rajapaksa scions, resisted Gota-
baya’s wish that he step aside.
Distrust deepened to the point
that members of Mahinda’s inner
circle, besieged in his compound
May 9, felt that the president had
abandoned them. Udayanga
Weeratunga, a cousin who was
with the prime minister, and an-
other family aide who was pre-
sent, told The Washington Post
that they suspect Gotabaya’s sup-
porters in the army purposefully
delayed coming to their aid for six
hours.
Gotabaya is clinging to power
after replacing his brother with a
new prime minister, who revealed
this week that Sri Lanka has less
than $1 million in foreign re-
serves, dwindling medical sup-
plies and almost no fuel.
Sri Lanka faces “total destruc-
tion,” former president Maithri-
pala Sirisena said. “The country
has learned a lesson about dynas-
tic politics.”
The family business
When Mahinda, the son of a
wealthy rice and coconut farmer
who was active in politics, ran for
parliament in 1970, he was follow-
ing in the tradition of the few elite
families that dominate Sri Lanka,
a lush teardrop-shape island off
the coast of India.
“You cannot win [in politics] if
SRI LANKA FROM A
Family feud drives
Sri Lanka to ruin
ance and development, pitching
himself as a technocrat, and Co-
lombo, with its emerging skyline
of Indian- and Chinese-funded
skyscrapers, as the next Singa-
pore. He won in a landslide.
On the day of his swearing-in
on Nov. 19, 2019, Gotabaya sig-
naled a break from his family. He
refused to w ear a r ed “sataka,” t he
Rajapaksa clan’s signature scarf,
favoring a short-sleeved shirt.
Unlike Mahinda, who printed his
own image on 1,000-rupee notes
while he was president, Gotabaya
prohibited government offices
from h anging his official p ortrait.
But the next day was “the be-
ginning of the downfall,” said
Nalaka Godahewa, a former fi-
nancial executive who was later
Gotabaya’s minister of mass me-
dia.who he had defeated at the polls
just three years earlier. The capi-
tal was tense as both men made
claims on the country’s No. 2 job
and rumors swirled that Wick-
remesinghe might be removed by
force. Fearing Mahinda and Basil
were trying to outflank him and
engineer their own return to pow-
er, Gotabaya secretly met Wick-
remesinghe to pledge his support.
Soon after, the Supreme Court
ruled against Mahinda’s claim,
and he backed down. The family
had no option but to support
Gotabaya.
In the run-up to elections, ter-
rorist attacks by Muslim extrem-
ists rocked Sri Lanka, galvanizing
Sinhalese Buddhist support
around the former military man.
On the campaign trail, Gotabaya
spoke of security, good govern-nate who is widely credited with
launching Gotabaya’s candidacy,
remembers an incident from 2018
when he was called by Mahinda to
Gotabaya’s home. Mahinda had
put Gotabaya’s name on the title
to an illegally built resort so that a
powerful monk, a political ally,
could get free electricity. The
scandal was about to leak and, as
was often the case, Mahinda was
reluctant to tell his brother, so he
nudged Jayaweera to break the
news to him.
Gotabaya was “livid,”
Jayaweera said, and stormed off
to a Buddhist temple, refusing to
share a car with his brother.
In October 2018, a constitu-
tional crisis erupted when Sirise-
na, then president, fired his prime
minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe,
and replaced him with Mahinda,millions of dollars hidden in off-
shore accounts.
Amid growing anger over the
Rajapaksas’ alleged cronyism and
corruption, Mahinda lost a bid for
a third term in 2015. Almost im-
mediately, an eclectic coalition of
pro-Western business executives,
military hard-liners and Buddhist
monks identified a new candi-
date: Gotabaya Rajapaksa.The middle brother
It quickly became apparent
that Gotabaya, backed by new
political sponsors, would clash
with Mahinda. The men rarely
confronted each other directly,
yet they disagreed on everything,
including high-stakes political
gamesmanship and petty corrup-
tion, family confidants said.
Dilith Jayaweera, a media mag-ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Students remove a police barrier in the capital, Colombo, during a demonstration May 21 demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka’s
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