Top Sri Lanka court clears way to strip former leaders of perks

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Former Presidents Ranil Wickremesinghe, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Chandrika Kumaratunga, and Maithripala Sirisena, along with former Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, at an event at the BMICH in Colombo on March 11, 2025. The Supreme Court on Tuesday (September 9, 2025) cleared the final legal hurdle to evict former presidents from their stately mansions and strip them of their luxury cars, bodyguards and pensions - J. Sujeewakumar/ENCL/File

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court cleared the final legal hurdle on Tuesday (9) to evict former presidents from their stately mansions and strip them of their luxury cars, bodyguards and pensions.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist government has tabled a bill that would repeal a 1986 law granting lavish state housing and other entitlements to former presidents and their widows.

The bill is part of Dissanayake’s effort to impose more official austerity after the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.

Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told parliament on Tuesday that the highest court had rejected all six petitions challenging the bill.

The court “has ruled that the bill can be passed with a simple majority in Parliament,” Wickramaratne told the assembly, where the government enjoys a comfortable two-thirds majority.

The decision followed former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa’s refusal to vacate a ritzy home in the capital Colombo, despite repeated requests. His party was one of the petitioners against the bill.

Under the 1986 law, former presidents were also entitled to luxury cars with government-supplied fuel, secretarial services and security personnel.

When Dissanayake took power a year ago, Rajapaksa had 243 bodyguards, including 63 elite army commandos and 23 drivers.

Earlier this year, the government cut his detail to 60 and limited his fleet to three vehicles, including a Mercedes-Maybach and a high-end SUV.

There was no immediate comment from Rajapaksa, but an aide told AFP that he would most likely vacate the residence.

In 2021, as prime minister, Rajapaksa spent some 800 million rupees ($2.7 million) of public funds on refurbishing the house.

It is estimated to have a monthly rental value of 4.6 million rupees, more than 150 times his official entitlement.

His younger brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to step down from the presidency in 2022 over allegations of economic mismanagement and corruption, moved out of a state bungalow after a brief stay following his resignation.

Two other former presidents – Chandrika Kumaratunga and Maithripala Sirisena – are living in government housing in Colombo’s upmarket diplomatic quarter.

Many of the residences were built during British colonial rule for senior civil servants from London.

Late last year, the government drastically reduced the number of security personnel assigned to former leaders, a move that officials said saved more than 1.2 billion rupees annually for taxpayers.

The security of the two Rajapaksa brothers alone cost the state more than a billion rupees last year, according to government figures.

Between them, they ruled Sri Lanka for a decade until 2015 and again from November 2019 to July 2022.

-Agence France-Presse

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