Photo of army-seized agricultural land in Jaffna

Following the appointment of Basil Rajapaksa to the cabinet, the Economist highlights growing unrest throughout Sri Lanka including farmers, teachers, war victims, and civil society actors. In light of this growing unrest, the Economist writes that “the Rajapaksas’ suffocating hold on power look like a weakness”.

Sri Lanka’s president Gotabaya Rajapaksa “has made explicit the link he sees between an all-powerful state and the centrality of Buddhism, whose more chauvinist priests he courts,” writes the Economist this week, as it warned that Rajapaksa is “amassing personal power”.

Despite the on-going damage to national reconciliation, Gotabaya Rajapaksa is insistent on the normalisation of “military’s influence in the civilian sphere”, warns the Economist. 
 

The normalisation of the military