When Sri Lanka’s president resigned just days after protesters stormed his palace, some thankfully swimming in his pool, it was a victory after months of protests against the country’s economic crisis.
But that sentiment was short-lived, nuzly Hameem, an engineer turned activist, told USA TODAY.
Parliament temporarily elected the unpopular former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who then declared a state of emergency and destroyed a protest site in Colombo, the national capital, the army force.
It has been more than four months since Sri Lankans took to the streets to oust the former president, accusing him of mismanaging the economy and leaving the South Asian island nation’s other 22 million people with severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Now, as the country pushes for an International Monetary Fund bailout and the protest motion comes to combicountry to push for deeper reforms, Sri Lankans like Hameem say any road to recovery will be long, leading citizens to prepare for protracted economic struggles in their lives. .
“It will take at least two years to get back to where we were in 2019,” said Hameem, 28, who said he would possibly have to look for paintings in a context of stagnant structure.
In Colombo, the symptoms of the crisis are everywhere.
Residents revel in the three-hour power cuts, a relief since the beginning of this year. Many still don’t have paints and other people line up for days to get a few litres of fuel, Shamara Wettimuny, a historian at Oxford University, said this week. of Colombo. La Sri Lankan rupee has fallen in price and food inflation has exceeded 50 per cent.
Hospitals lack medicines and more than 8 out of 10 citizens cut meals, eat less or degrade their diets, according to the World Food Programme. Some schools, closed due to fuel shortages, have recently reopened, according to reports.
While these disorders hit ordinary elegance and rural deficits hardest, the crisis has also eroded the economic security of average elegance. Queues at passport offices would possibly portend a “brain drain” as recovery is expected to take years, Wettimuny said. .
Those who have the means to face a difficult choice: leave or “readjust their life and expectations,” he told USA TODAY.
Earlier this month, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva called Sri Lanka a “warning sign” for countries affected by the economic fallout from the pandemic and the emerging costs of war-fueled commodities in Ukraine.
The crisis in Sri Lanka had been brewing for some time, Mavens said. Between 2012 and 2020, Sri Lanka’s debt-to-GDP ratio doubled to around 80 percent, Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently wrote. in The Guardian.
In 2019, the country’s main tourism industry was affected by the bombing of several hotels and churches. Tourism has been further decimated by the pandemic, and has taken over a key source of foreign exchange, said Vidhura Tennekoon, an assistant professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University. in Indianapolis.
Their disorders have been compounded through what critics call disastrous mistakes in economic policy, adding tax cuts that reduced profits and a ban overturned since last year on chemical fertilizers that have drastically reduced yields, adding tea.
In June, Wickremesinghe, then minister, said the economy had collapsed. In July, it declared Sri Lanka bankrupt. Sri Lanka suspended payment on its $51 billion in foreign loans.
The crisis has made it difficult to import gasoline, milk, cooking fuel and paper, leading to an intensification of citizens’ struggles and helping thousands of people take to the streets to protest.
Hameem, who lives in Colombo, said the crisis forced him to queue for 30 hours to get fuel as he experienced daily power cuts and increases in his food charges. In just a small image reflected in the increases, he said a lunch that in the past charged three hundred rupees, or about $1, tripled its price.
Kavindya Thennakoon, 26, who protested in Sri Lanka from March to June, said her single mother, who owns a small tea plantation in Kegalle district, noticed her production was reduced due to a lack of fertilizer and reduced government subsidies.
“Even if I send cash to my mother, there is nothing to buy,” said Thennakoon, who is now in the United States. “You feel helpless. “
Colombo’s lawyer, Dan Malika Gunasekera, 50, said the crisis closed the courts and prevented him from achieving his position. This has left him struggling to locate pieces ranging from cooking fuel to foreign exchange to pay for the college his daughter attends in Australia.
While Chiranthaka Palugaswewa, 29, said he shied away from the worst effects of the crisis, he had to wait 8 hours in fuel lines amid sweltering heat for a few months in the country.
Even staples like rice and lentils charge 4 times more than before, he said. Many of his friends and clients skip meals.
“There are other people who are hungry,” said Palugaswewa, a criminal defense attorney from Hambantota. “Our other people are suffering.
For more than a hundred days, thousands of participants in a movement with few official leaders demonstrated, held courses and imagined a new future for Sri Lanka, said Pathum Egodawatta, 31, a police designer.
Egodawatta recalls that several months ago in Colombo, protesters tore a piece of cardboard from a box of biscuits and scribbled “Gota Go Gama,” which roughly means “Gotabaya Go Home village,” in black Sinhalese letters. They displayed it in the makeshift village of tents that serve as a center for demonstrations.
On July 9, when protesters invaded the apartment of then-President Rajapaksa, Palugaswewa said he had been put in a truck and cried as he watched it unfold.
“We must take back our country and show our politicians that we are tracking them down and holding them accountable,” he said.
But after Rajapaksa fled the county on July 22, the new president sent Sri Lankan troops to clean up the village in a violent night raid denounced through the United Nations, the United States and human rights groups.
This fueled distrust in the new administration and left open questions about what to do next with the protest movement. Thennakoon sees the raid on the camp as a “turning point” that prompted protesters to regroup and strategize on next steps.
Many will continue to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government until there is systemic change.
Several protesters told USA TODAY that they hoped Sri Lanka’s political formula would be restructured so that there would be more checks and balances on the executive presidency. They also called for the eradication of corruption, greater diversity within the country’s cabinet, and more powerful mechanisms. hold politicians accountable and the consequences of human rights violations through leaders.
Palugaswewa said he believes the protest motion will concentrate on the elections and “reject this totally corrupt formula in the next elections. “
At the same time, “there is also resignation and there is a lot of exhaustion” among the protesters, Wettimuny said. While they controlled to remove the former president, he says, “he was replaced by someone who many other people illegitimately. “
Tamanna Salikuddin, director of systems for South Asia at the U. S. Institute of Peace. In the U. S. , he recently wrote in an article that the government will have to find a “peaceful way for the ongoing protests and riots” while “seeking some political acceptance from the country. Polarized ethnic communities and most likely modifying the charter to override the executive presidency. “
Meanwhile, the government is in a debt restructuring plan, a condition of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The president recently tweeted that negotiations with the IMF were “ending and discussions with donor countries were also progressing. “
Wickremesinghe also cited new fuel deliveries and reduced power outages. An amendment dealing with presidential authority would be introduced “that would address many of the public’s considerations on the political front,” he said.
But the weight of uncertainty weighs heavily, Palugaswewa said. Sri Lanka’s Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera recently said fuel distribution would be limited for a year due to a shortage of foreign exchange.
“Maybe we’re very naïve,” he said. I have no idea how we maintain hope, but we do. We have hope.
Thennakoon fears that the worst struggles are yet to come. But when he feels hope fading, he thinks of the months he spent protesting in Sri Lanka.
He remembers drinking tea in libraries while discussing the Sri Lankan letter with other protesters. She remembers the first time she gave her tear gas and how other people picked her up, gave her water and covered her eyes after she fell to the ground.
“There’s this sense of community, this sense of love, that these protests create,” he said. “Combining and detecting the strength we have as a collective is simply electrifying. “
At a waterfront park in Colombo called Galle Face the May protests, Thennakoon said he was heading to the beach, hunting in the Indian Ocean and crying with joy and pain.
“I saw the pain of my country, but I saw its other people join. “
Contributor: Associated Press.
Chris Kenning reported from Louisville, Kentucky, and Christine Fernando from Chicago. Contact them in ckenning@usatoday. com and cfernando@usatoday. com.