Deposed Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa faced calls for his arrest on Saturday after returning home from self-imposed exile under the protection of his successor’s government.
Rajapaksa fled the island nation under military escort in July after a huge crowd stormed his official residence after months of demonstrations sparked by an unprecedented economic crisis.
The 73-year-old announced his retirement from Singapore and spent weeks under virtual house arrest in a Bangkok hotel before returning late Friday.
Leaders of the protest campaign that toppled his government said Rajapaksa, who lost his immunity as president after leaving office, should now face trial.
“Gotabaya has returned because no country is ready to take him, he has no hiding place,” Joseph Stalin, the leader of a teachers’ union that helped mobilize protesters, told AFP.
“He should be arrested immediately for causing so much suffering to the 22 million people of Sri Lanka,” he added. “He cannot live freely as if nothing happened.”
Rajapaksa’s government has been accused of chaotic mismanagement as Sri Lanka’s economy went into a dramatic downturn.
The crisis has seen acute food shortages, long power outages and long queues at gas stations for tight fuel supplies after the country ran out of foreign exchange to pay for essential imports.
Sri Lanka’s main opposition coalition, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), has yet to comment on Rajapaksa’s return, but a former bloc minister said the ousted leader must be prosecuted.
“Gotabaya must be held accountable for his crimes before and during his presidency,” Ajith Perera told reporters in Colombo.
Rajapaksa was wreathed with flowers by ministers and senior politicians after disembarking from his plane in Colombo.
He was taken in a security convoy to a new official residence in the capital made available to him by the government of his successor, President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Wickremesinghe depends on Rajapaksa’s Sri Lankan Podujana Peramuna Party (SLPP) to govern and on Friday passed an austerity budget with the group’s backing – a prerequisite for an International Monetary Fund bailout.
“Gotabaya’s return shows that the SLPP is still powerful despite the humiliation it has endured,” Hasith Kandaudahewa, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Colombo, told AFP.
But Kandaudahewa said the return of the deeply unpopular Rajapaksa had the potential to undermine his successor.
Rajapaksa on Saturday began receiving guests at his new home with his older brother – former President Mahinda Rajapaksa – who was one of the first to visit him, witnesses said.
Mahinda was serving as prime minister in his brother’s government when he too was chased from his home by a mob enraged by an attack on protesters by government loyalists.
– ‘Bring him to court’ –
Rights activists have vowed to push for Gotabaya’s indictment on a range of charges, including his alleged role in the 2009 killing of prominent newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
“We welcome his decision to return so we can bring him to justice for the crimes he committed,” Tharindu Jayawardhana, a spokesman for the Sri Lanka Young Journalists’ Association, said on Friday.
Several corruption cases against Rajapaksa stalled after his election as president.
Rajapaksa is also being charged in a US court with the murder of Wickrematunge and the torturing of Tamil prisoners at the end of the island’s traumatic civil war in 2009.
– ‘Prosperity and splendor’ –
Rajapaksa won a landslide election in 2019 after promising “prospects of prosperity and splendor” but saw his popularity nosedive as the country’s crisis deepened.
His government has been accused of instituting unsustainable tax cuts that have pushed up the national debt and exacerbated the country’s economic woes.
The coronavirus pandemic also dealt a hammer blow to the island’s tourism industry and dried up remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad – both major foreign exchange earners.
Wickremesinghe was elected by Parliament to lead the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term. Since then he has cracked down on street protests and arrested leading activists.
The government defaulted on its $51 billion in external debt in April, and the central bank is forecasting a record eight percent contraction in GDP this year.
After months of negotiations, the International Monetary Fund on Thursday agreed to a conditional $2.9 billion bailout to repair Sri Lanka’s struggling finances.