Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a Sri Lankan politician and former military officer who served as the 8th president of Sri Lanka from 2019 to 2022, initiated a self-imposed exile on 13 July 2022, following widespread protests led by civilians demanding his resignation, triggered by extensive discontent over his handling of the country's economic crisis.
On 13 July 2022, following a string of mammoth protests that eventually culminated into a civilian takeover of his official residence and workplace by protestors, Rajapaksa fled the country, accompanied by his spouse and a personal security detail, to the Maldives, before further retreating to Singapore on 14 July. On 14 July, whilst in exile, Rajapaksa resigned the presidency, becoming the first Sri Lankan president to relinquish the office mid-term. His official letter of resignation, which was emailed to Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, the speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament, was announced later that day, and was consequently accepted the following day, on 15 July.
Rajapaksa's resignation triggered widespread celebrations amongst the Sri Lankan people, many of whom had long demanded the removal of the Rajapaksa family from power. Ranil Wickremesinghe, a veteran politician whom Rajapaksa had earlier appointed as the country's prime minister, succeeded Rajapaksa as interim president on 15 July and was officially elected to the presidency five days later, on 20 July.
Amidst intensifying calls for holding him accountable for the nation's socio-economic quagmire in the wake of his resignation, Rajapaksa remained in exile within Singapore, before moving to Thailand in August, where he spent the remainder of his exile in discreet. In the midst of intense debating amongst many over a possible homecoming, on 2 September, Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka, ending 52 days of self-imposed exile.
Background
Biography
Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa (; ), a noteworthy member of the Rajapaksa political lineage, was a former lieutenant colonel in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) who served during the initial stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War, from 1971 to 1991. Following a distinguished career in the military, Rajapaksa became a technocrat in the field of information technology, emigrating to the United States in 1998, where he acquired a dual citizenship. Returning to Sri Lanka in 2005, he was made a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Defence during the administration of Mahinda Rajapaksa, his elder brother, who had then been elected as President of Sri Lanka. Between 2005 and 2009, the Rajapaksa brothers spearheaded Sri Lanka's assault against Tamil separatists, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in an overwhelming Sri Lankan victory in May 2009. Nonetheless, both brothers were accused of having committed numerous war crimes and human rights abuses during the war, charges which both have vehemently denied.
After retiring as Permanent Secretary following Mahinda's electoral defeat in 2015, Rajapaksa contested for the presidency in the country's 2019 presidential election as a candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which he won, securing 52.25% of the popular vote. Assuming the office in 2019, he re-instated Mahinda as prime minister, later installing several members of his family to multiple portfolios within his government, following the SLPP's thumping victory in the 2020 parliamentary elections. Confronted with an intensifying economic crisis aggravated by financial mismanagement, tax cuts, rising external debt and over-dependence on foreign remittances coupled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country began to face shortages of basic necessities, such as fuel, gas and electricity. Rajapaksa's government began to grow hugely unpopular amongst the Sri Lankan people. Amidst the country's intensifying economic plight, many deemed his government to be responsible for the crisis, with critics accusing him of being authoritarian, kleptocratic, nepotistic and corrupt.