Mahinda at 77: What is his legacy?

• Social media may not be the ideal barometer of leadership popularity, but it is unlikely that Mahinda Rajapaksa would want to venture out from his protected laurels to check the public pulse

As former President Mahinda Rajapaksa celebrated his 77th birthday last week, one might have pondered over the legacy of Rajapaksa or more accurately, of the Rajapaksas, the familiocracy he presided over.

Social media reaction to his birthday celebrations revealed little public affection. As a journalist quipped, “rata kapu un, den cake kanawa” (Those who ate the nation are now eating cake). 

Social media may not be the ideal barometer of leadership popularity, but it is unlikely that Mahinda Rajapaksa would want to venture out from his protected laurels to check the public pulse. 

Perhaps, the public mood no longer matters. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Rajapaksas’ anointed successor has not only silenced the public but has terrorised the peaceful protesters who toppled a kleptocratic regime.

That muted public reaction was in stark contrast to the rejuvenated regime acolytes. The revival of the old regime was on display during another event over the weekend: As Basil Rajapaksa arrived in the country after a sojourn in the USA, a long line of stooges, beaming with fawning smiles queued up at the VIP lounge of the Katunayake International Airport to receive the Pohottuwa strategist, a complete turn of fortune for the Rajapaksa brother who during the height of Aragalaya tried to sneak away,  but ignominiously turned away by the immigration officials at the airport.

If anything, Ranil Wickremesinghe has created stability, not for the country, but for the Rajapaksas.  That the crooks who robbed the nation are returning to the VIP welcome while the youth who protested against an unscrupulous regime are locked up under fictitious charges is the new normal of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s would-be lenders and creditors should demand an end to this dubious status quo for neither economic recovery nor political stability are feasible under a regime that fosters impunity towards the worst economic criminals.

Family before the country? 

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s legacy cannot be assessed in isolation with his extended family for the most dominant characteristic of his regime was nepotism. However, the legacy of Mahinda is a lot more complex and nuanced than his brothers. For instance, Basil, known as Mr ten per cent, is a straight-up crook,  Mr 10 per cent, as described in embassy cables of Western embassies in Colombo, and younger brother Gota, though may not have indulged in corruption to the extent of the rest of the family, had a murderous past,  and was plainly stupid and his epic mismanagement catalysed the full-blown economic crisis.

But, both of them, and their entire extended families were surrogates of Mahinda Rajapaksa, without Mahinda none would have a fraction of the political influence they wielded.

Therefore, probably the greatest political sin of Mahinda Rajapaksa is nepotism. He turned Sri Lankan politics into a familiocracy; at any time during his rule, the family-controlled a two third of the budgetary allocations and key ministries. Some of the loot then trickles down to the rest of the party acolytes, creating a top-down patronage structure overseen by Basil. That patronage network remains intact; the fawning welcome of Basil Rajapaksa is a case in point. 

It is an irony of the Rajapaksa rule that its patronage system has outlived the country’s economy.

War victory 

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s salient achievement was the ending of the terrorism that plagued the nation for over two and a half decades. He went the extra mile to achieve a complete defeat of the LTTE on the battlefront in contrast to the majority view of the political circles for mere containment of the LTTE. The stubborn reality is that terrorists cannot be contained, they pop up like a rubber ball held under the water.  Rajapaksa grasped that common-sense notion shared by a majority of Sri Lankans and gave political leadership to the battlefield annihilation of the LTTE.  There was a commendable degree of political decisiveness in display against international calls for the reprieve of the Tiger leadership-- who could then live to fight for another day.

 However, whether that decisiveness was an act in the interest of the nation or a matter of selfish personal calculations was soon to be contested as he exploited the military victory to cultivate a personality cult and nursed dynastic ambitions. 

That leaves Mahinda Rajapaksa in the league of not Churchills and Lee Kuan Yew, but of Mugabe and a long list of African liberators. They were men who rose to the challenge at one particular time, but their greed and power hunger got the best of them. Perhaps the disregard for constitutional norms and personalization of the state in their image may have been influenced by their upbringing and socialization experience. Tiger cannot change its stripes! 
But, Mahinda also showed a sense of urgency to address the infrastructure deficit in the country, unleashing a transformation of the country’s infrastructure landscape. Until then, Sri Lanka’s economic ills were blamed in part on poor infrastructure. You need a degree of political decisiveness to build anything in this country, where every new development project attracts hordes of protesters. Mahinda Rajapaksa should be commended for breaking political inertia for high-end infrastructure development. Without him, someone might be still building the Southern expressway. (His predecessor had been building it on paper for over a decade). 

But, again, be it greed, inexperience, ego, or a combination of all got the best of him, and he built a lot of white elephants, from airports in the jungles to the Hambantota port, of which the second phase was built under a commercial loan with seven per cent annual interest.

These vestige projects are a by-product of the nepotistic rule that his government evolved to be over time. 
He also refused to address the ethnic grievances in a reasonable way, instead, believed that the procrastination would serve him politically. 

 By the time he lost the presidential election in 2015 in running for a third term, he had exhausted the post-war economic opening. 

His successor did not manage the economy any better, but democracy was strengthened under their government.
Mahinda returned and nominated Gotabaya as the party candidate, disregarding the perils of that decision, which he could have known better than anyone else. Just as he put the family before the country during his presidency, this time, he put the family before the party.

Gotabaya brought out the worst excesses of a familiocracy as the constitution was amended in line with the whims and fancies of the family and Basil Rajapaksa was brought back from the wilderness, by removing a constitutional restriction against dual citizens’ holding the public office. 

In no time, Gota pushed the nation down the precipice. Without Mahinda, he would not have been the president. But the blood is thicker than the water.

In the end, the Rajapaksa brothers wrecked the nation in a way that even the megalomaniac terrorist Velupillai Prabhakaran could not do over two and half decades. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa is corrupt, power-hungry and unsophisticated, but so are most political leaders in this part of the world. However, very few of them have dragged their nation into bankruptcy and destroyed the economic gains accrued over decades, as the Rajapaksas did. 

Where and why the incompetent familiocracy went terribly wrong deserves in-depth and non-partisan analysis by political scientists. 

However, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s legacy would be this broken nation. He let this happen, actively participated in it, and profiteered along the way. He and his brothers should be in jail. 

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