The unceremonious and unprecedentedly violent exit of Sri Lanka Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa could not have come at a worse time, which is already reeling under the twin weight of an economic crisis and the political instability caused by it. The irony at the end of the day is that no one is talking about these two complications, focusing instead on the violence that saw many ruling party politicians’ houses and other properties torched, including those of Mahinda in Kurunegala, the Rajapaksas’ ancestral home and parents’ memorials in southern Medamulana, and late father DA Rajapaksa’s statute in Tangalle.
Monday’s violence was triggered by Mahinda’s loyalists, who heard his decision to quit as Prime Minister and launched pre-planned attacks. The attacks were against the public protests for his exit, outside his official residence, ‘Temple Trees’, and later at the Galle Face Green beachfront, also in capital Colombo, where Sri Lanka’s very own ‘Arab Spring’ was being staged for weeks together, though with numbers much less than what the global media had claimed.