By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera –

Asanga Abeygoonasekera

Gotabaya Rajapaksa has well explained his own tragedy where the protagonist comprehends his insignificance. To comprehend a self-diagnosis with an insignificance is neither an act of cowardice but the opposite; this value of Gotabaya’s self-diagnosis must be appreciated.

Bombs directly impact election results in South Asia, as discussed in my book ‘Conundrum of an Island’. The last major bomb attack in Sri Lanka, the Easter Sunday Terror attack, certainly altered the voter path towards restoring National Security upon the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2019.

Just like bombs, Do books have a profound effect on elections? In South Asia, the newly released book ‘Why Bharat Matters” written by the Indian Foreign Minister Dr.Subramaniam Jaishankar and ‘The Conspiracy” by Sri Lankan former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa appear to be an attempt in this direction targeting the elections. Both books are different in context but nudge the same ultra-nationalistic element. Jaishankar’s book propagates ‘Hindutva’ and Indian nationalism, finding roots in Indian foreign policy connecting with the Indian mythology of Ramayana; Gotabaya’s book appeals to the sentiment of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism to lodge his claim an external foreign conspiracy ousted him. According to Gotabaya, ‘my departure has left Sinhalese and particularly Sinhalese Buddhists are being taken for granted, ignored, sidelined, downtrodden and humiliated by various foreign and local parties.’ He articulates that his loss was the nation’s Buddhist society’s loss. The same narrative was captured during an interview by this author last month in Colombo from a Sinhalese Buddhist ultra-nationalist warning: “We will soon become an Indian colony”. For South Asia, ultra-nationalism has generally paved the way for electoral victories, and perhaps the ultra-nationalist toolkit impacting five factors (see table) is sufficient to elect the next leader in India and Sri Lanka, overshadowing economic woes.

Table: Five Factors highlighted in The Conspiracy and Why Bharath Matters targeting elections

Regime Change and the US Factor

Fourteen days before the Presidential election victory of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on 4^th November 2019, I received a letter from Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office (PMO/1/R/Misc-2019) through the Ministry of Defence, dating 30^th October 2019, with a note from the Sri Lankan Secretary of Defence on possible national security threat for a regime change in Sri Lanka involving an external country. The dispatch clearly stated that the secretary required immediate attention to the subject and its attached material, consisting of hundreds of pages. With its one-track agenda, the syndicate sent the same material to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, possibly on the same day. The material was one disk with multiple files, and it was well-documented on the ‘Neoliberal agenda on Regime change’ or the Color Revolution from institutes such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). A thorough research on the entire disk was conducted at the National Security think tank (INSS), where I was heading as the Director General. This was possibly my last national security analysis and briefing before the immediate takeover by the Admiral Professor. Jayanath Collombage, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s advisor and foreign secretary, became acting Director General of the institute. After evaluating the lengthy content, I reported to the Secretary of Defence that most of it was fiction and closer to a Hollywood movie, although effective due to the well-presented documentation in a research format. There was no need for regime change at the tail end of Gotabaya’s presidential race. However, one could even speculate that Prime Minister Wickremasinghe lodged the ‘Regime Change’ before his term ended.

Fast-forward to the present day, there are three books in this regard, one of which is a well-crafted political strategy to establish and solidify the theory of ‘regime change’ carried out by the US and India. Today, it’s used to save the standing and reputation of an ousted Sri Lankan president, and I am sure it’s considerably sufficient to achieve his objective of arousing the sentiments of the ultra-nationalists in the country.

Three books on neoliberal ‘Regime Change’

Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s new book ‘Conspiracy’, blaming his removal on a section of the international community, “internationally sponsored regime change”, matches the dispatch I received in 2019. It is usual practice by popular autocrats to blame the work of the academic Gene Sharp’s ‘Theory of nonviolent resistance’, viewed as a CIA tactical operation for regime change. Before Gotabaya’s book, there were two other similar narratives on Sri Lanka’s uprising, depicted as a neoliberal conspiracy by the West, individually targeting US and Indian Intelligence services. The first book was by Asoka Bandarage’s ‘Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World’. This book is well-crafted and full of conjectures. Asoka makes multiple references to the subject and states, ‘It is also interesting to note that the US Under Secretary for State, Victoria Nuland, known as the mastermind of the regime change in Ukraine in 2014, was in Sri Lanka in March 2022 during the protests to bring down the Rajapaksa regime’, thus letting the imagination of the reader run riot.

Further, the book points out that US establishments such as NED and individuals such as the US Ambassador Julie Chung were part of the regime change conspiracy. With the initial academic conspiracy theory, this book influenced the second book “Nine; The Hidden Story” by a Parliamentarian in Sri Lanka, Wimal Weerawansa, now even translated into Russian. Some of Asoka’s work was borrowed by Wimal Weerawansa, who crafted a politically hyped-up fiction, integrating the concocted academic jargon from the first book. The third book by Gotabaya is in the same direction, seeing his dismissal as a targeted conspiracy by the West.

Patriot vs Traitor

In Sri Lanka’s political history, Gotabaya was the first Sri Lankan president to have prior dual citizenship. He has attempted to fast-track to renounce his US citizenship through his attorney, Ali Sabri, who became the Foreign Minister. At that time of the presidential race, the US gambled on Gotabaya’s commitment and support towards US policy. What materialised was something unexpected as his trusted advisors wanted “an equidistant policy” with all the big powers, thus a tilt in the foreign policy towards China, a setback and if not a betrayal to the US and India. Gotabaya’s China tilt was captured with considerable research evidence in my book ‘The Teardrop Diplomacy(2023)’; however, the considered view was that the protest resulting in the virtual deposition commenced with an organic citizen-led movement with no sign of an external regime change. There are no hard facts to prove the external regime change factor. The unpopular domestic policies and decision-making impacting the economy and people’s daily lives motivated the protests, and the majority of protesters were “Sinhala Buddhists” who voted him into office with much expectation. Therefore, his wooing that part of the society in his book is very ironic.

Gotabaya is pitching this book months before the next presidential race to lodge the idea to his perceived voter base, the Sinhalese Buddhists. The Rajapaksa family has a clear track record in winning the majoritarian ultra-nationalist voter base by creating the ‘external interference’ of a ‘national security’ threat narrative during prior elections. What stands against them is the newly found momentum of the youth and a section of the middle-aged rejecting the old guard. Meanwhile, another Rajapaksa brother, Basil Rajapaksa, a US citizen, has returned from the US to strategise the campaign with the present government. Basil detaches himself from the book; overall, the credibility of marketing a regime change conspiracy will have less political currency due to the magnitude of domestic political blunders. The danger is that the fictitious propaganda will further polarise society into choosing patriots who would protect the motherland and traitors who would stand against them based on the ethnicity and religion of the individual. Again, a narrative familiar to Rajapaksa rule.

*Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is the Executive Director of the South Asia Foresight Network (SAFN) in Washington DC. @AsangaAbey