These are apparently bad days for former heads of state across the world. Close on the heels of the passage of a new law, stripping former Sri Lankan Presidents of their perks and privileges, came the news of ex-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro being sentenced to jail for 27 years and three months for plotting a military coup. A panel of five Supreme Court judges handed down the sentence immediately after convicting Bolsonaro. A dissenting judge voted to acquit him, and the former President’s lawyers have taken exception to the sentence.
The main charge against Bolsonaro is that he led a conspiracy in a bid to stay in power after losing the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. One may recall that the UNP-led Yahapalana government claimed that defeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa had made a coup attempt to retain his hold on power after losing the presidential election in January 2015. Minister Mangala Samaraweera, and others kept on accusing Rajapaksa of having attempted to persuade the military and police chiefs to support the conspiracy so that he could stay in power, with the use of force, if necessary. The Yahapalana administration’s claim turned out to be false, and Rajapaksa made a comeback through electoral means, a few years later.
There has been a far more serious claim about a conspiracy here. In 2022, the then Speaker Mahinda Yaha Abeywardena told Parliament that there had been a conspiracy to pressure him to appoint himself as the Acting President in violation of the Constitution at the height of a popular uprising that led to democratically elected President Gotobaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
“The objective of those who wanted me to do so was to create another Libya or Afghanistan here. They did not want to resolve the crisis here or restore law and order to protect this country … I was asked to name a Prime Minister and Cabinet of ministers and rule the country, but I was determined to protect democracy,” Abeywardena said, adding that when he refused to follow their diktats, they intimidated him. He said there had been foreign and local individuals among those who pressured him to act in violation of the Constitution.
Leader of the National Freedom Front Wimal Weerawansa was the first to claim that there had been a foreign conspiracy to oust President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He said the US had been party to it. US Ambassador Julie Chung rejected his claim out of hand.
What we witnessed in Colombo, on 09 July 2022, has been viewed in some quarters as the culmination of a well-planned destabilisation process aimed at shaking this country off the sphere of influence of one world power and realigning it with some others. If Parliament had fallen into the hands of violent protesters who went all out to march on it, the country would have been plunged into anarchy like Libya. Gotabaya himself blamed his ouster on a conspiracy.
Abeywardena’s claim that some local and foreign individuals hatched a plot to plunge this country into anarchy has gone unprobed while Bolsonaro has been jailed for a coup he plotted in the same year. If those who attempted to force Abeywardena to resort to an illegal course of action had succeeded in their endeavour, this country would have descended into anarchy. There is no guarantee that the same sinister forces will not make a fresh attempt to achieve their goal, and create conditions for another uprising. Hence the need for Abeywardena’s claim to be investigated thoroughly and action taken against those who were behind the 2022 ‘conspiracy’. It may be recalled that ousted Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina has also alleged that there was a foreign hand behind the uprising that toppled her government last year.
Worryingly, neither the NPP government nor the SJB-led Opposition has taken up Abeywardena’s allegation. Why the JVP-led NPP cannot do so may be understandable; its leaders made a determined yet abortive bid to capture Parliament at the height of Aragalaya, and therefore they may not want to open a can of worms by ordering a probe into anything that happened during that period. Why the Opposition has chosen to remain silent defies comprehension. How can its cantankerous MPs be so lily-livered?
Doomed is the nation that has not a single MP to call for a probe into a conspiracy to destabilise it.
