Sri Lanka’s president was served a stark warning by Chief opposition whip Lakshman Kiriella this week, who cited the cases of Hitler, Mussolini and Gaddafi – three leaders who were killed or committed suicide – as to why Gotabaya Rajapaksa should resign immediately.

“History repeats itself,” warned the senior vice president of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

According to the Daily Mirror, Kiriella said,

“The most cruel and sadistic megalomaniac dictator the world knew was Adolf Hitler. When public anger was mounting against him in and out of Germany towards the final stages of WW II and Soviet forces were approaching Berlin, he committed suicide in his bunker by swallowing cyanide and shooting himself, his wife Eva Von Braun and the pet dog on April 30, 1945.

His confidante and accomplice of war crimes Benito Mussolini was brutally killed by Italians on April 28, 1945 in Northern Italy and even spat on his body that had been dumped in a drain.

In recent past, the strong man of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was beaten, tortured and summarily murdered on October 20, 2011 in Sirte during the Arab Spring and his mutilated body was found on the roadside.

The world history is abound with similar tragic, and violent mass revolts that brought a painful, tragic and degrading death to kings, dictators and other rulers who did not listen to the public demand. The SJB’s fervent request to President Rajapaksa is not to turn Sri Lanka into a similar disaster and tender his resignation not tomorrow but today because tomorrow may be too late.”

This is not the first time that the comparison to Adolf Hitler has been evoked in Sri Lanka. Last year, a Sri Lankan minister sparked controversy and a backlash from Germany after claiming that “6.9 million people who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanted him to be a Hitler”, when speaking about the Sri Lankan president’s 2019 election victory.

He was later sworn in as the State Minister of Community Police Services at the Presidential Secretariat.