“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote 19th century English historian Lord Acton (1834-1902). Quite clearly, neighbouring Sri Lanka’s recently ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, swept to highest office in 2019 with a massive majority, became power drunk. Three of his brothers were brazenly appointed prime minister, irrigation and finance minister; his son and several relatives were awarded high public offices. Such blatant nepotism compounded by muscular majoritarianism evidenced by failure to conciliate Sri Lanka’s 5 million Tamil minority, were acts of commission and omission of a brash politician corrupted by power.
In 2005, after Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected president, he appointed his brother Gotabaya to crush the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) who started an armed rebellion in 1983 against Sinhala oppression of the island’s Tamil minority. Gotabaya discharged his mandate with ruthless efficiency and crushed the LTTE rebellion taking a toll of 100,000 lives before a ceasefire was called in 2009. As a result, Mahinda was re-elected president in 2010.
Although ousted from office in 2015 following corruption and nepotism scandals, after a suspicious bombing of several Christian churches in Colombo on Easter Sunday, 2019, allegedly by Muslim minority extremists, Gotabaya who had brutally crushed LTTE extremists, was swept to presidential office with strong support of the business community. As quid pro quo, immediately after election he slashed income and VAT taxes. A year later, when the Covid-19 virus swept the world, the government’s revenue was insufficient to fund the food and healthcare subsidies for the general populace following lockdown of industry and commerce. Simultaneously, the island republic’s substantial income from tourism dried up.
With typical arrogance, instead of consulting with expert economists and business leaders, President Gotabaya and prime minister Mahinda whimsically mandated a switch to organic farming to save the cost of imported fertilizer, adversely affecting agriculture production — especially of tea, a major earner of foreign exchange. Moreover, instead of slashing establishment expenditure, the SLPF government resorted to massive money printing, driving up the fiscal deficit as runaway inflation swept the nation.
The rise and swift fall of Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya government done in by authoritarian exercise of power, has important lessons for the BJP leadership which also practices muscular majoritarian politics while enacting momentous legislation — demonetisation, farm reform bills, GST and the Agnipath scheme — without adequate scrutiny and debate. It’s sobering to note that like Gotabaya, Narendra Modi was elected to office with a landslide majority in 2019. Like Sri Lanka, India is confronted with ballooning inflation and unemployment. India’s next General Election is scheduled for 2024. But Sri Lanka’s history proves a lot can happen before that.