COLOMBO – Disgraced former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was re-elected as the leader of the ruling party on Friday (15), claimed the Rajapaksa clan was being “unfairly” accused of causing the unprecedented economic crisis that hit the island nation last year.

Rajapaksa, 78, was re-elected as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) leader at its second convention held in Colombo. He vowed that the battered party would stage a strong comeback in the next elections in 2024.

Asserting that the party had been subject to ridicule to discourage its rank and file from when it announced plans to hold the convention, Rajapaksa said, “We will be back stronger. Let those who slander and ridicule us continue their ways.” “We are being unfairly accused of causing the economic crisis. We made sure (of) continued growth despite fighting the war with the LTTE”, said Rajapaksa, who was the island nation’s president from 2005-15.

Sri Lanka declared economic bankruptcy in April 2022 by announcing its first-ever sovereign default. The island nation was hit by its worst financial crisis in history, with its foreign exchange reserves falling to a critical low and the public coming out on the streets to protest the shortage of fuel, fertilizers and essential commodities.

This was the first major public gathering of the SLPP hierarchy since months of public agitations against them resulted in the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the president in early July 2022.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country to the Maldives and then to Singapore and Thailand before returning to Colombo in September.

Before that, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the eldest of the Rajapaksa brothers, was forced to resign as Prime Minister in May amid mass protests at the government’s handling of a deepening economic crisis. In June, his younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, who was the finance minister, resigned.

The SLPP had to back their rival Ranil Wickremesinghe to be the president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation, who fled for Maldives in early July 2022, when tens of thousands of people stormed his offices demanding his resignation.

Calling Wickremesinghe’s current economic policy a “necessary evil”, Rajapaksha said that even though it caused hardships to the people, it was to overcome the financial crisis.

“The people must be provided with relief,” Rajapaksa said.

The SLPP leader said that thousands of their supporters had been subject to physical threats, including the murder of a parliamentarian during the public uprising in April of 2022.

“We have to do justice to them by appointing a commission,” he said.

Several thousands of SLPP supporters brought to the venue were greeted by political rivals with grass bouquets to demean them.

Rivals criticized the Rajapaksas for holding the convention when the economic crisis left the public in a lurch.

In mid-November, the Supreme Court ruled that the Rajapaksa brothers -former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, ex-prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, former finance minister Basil Rajapaksa- and other senior officials violated the fundamental rights of the people by mishandling the economy and causing the unprecedented economic crisis.

-PTI