Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa dynasty is not as secure as it appearsThe family that runs everything is running out of cashSince winning the presidency in a landslide nearly two years ago, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has worried not that he has too many relatives in government, but that he has too few. One of the 72-year-old’s elder brothers, Mahinda, himself president for ten years until a surprise election defeat in 2015, is prime minister. Another, Chamal, is minister for irrigation. Chamal’s son, Shasheendra, is minister of state for “paddy and grains, organic food, vegetables, fruits, chillies, onions and potatoes, seed production and high-tech agriculture”. Mahinda’s son, Namal, is minister for youth and sports. And state minister for digital technology and enterprise development. And everything else, to judge by his hyperactive Twitter feed.But there is always room for one more Rajapaksa, 69-year-old Basil above all. “Gota” and Mahinda acknowledge him as the brains and organiser-in-chief of the family. He devised the electoral strategy behind its return to power, founding a new party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (slpp), which used digital wizardry to rally chauvinists from the ethnic majority, the Sinhalese—all while in prison on a corruption charge stemming from his time as economy minister (his detractors called him “Mr 10%”). On July 8th he was back in the cabinet.
AsiaJul 17th 2021 edition
