The president of Sri Lanka, struggling with a historic economic crisis and whose population demonstrates every day to demand the resignation, unveiled a new government on Monday, notably dismissing two of his brothers and a nephew.
For the tenth day in a row, tens of thousands of people maintained the siege of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office in the capital Colombo on Monday, demanding that the Rajapaksa clan cede power.
“People are suffering because of the economic crisis, and I deeply regret that,” the president said in a speech to his new cabinet, conceding that Sri Lanka should have gone to the IMF “much sooner.”
He also admitted the government made a ‘mistake’ in banning agrochemicals last year, a move taken to preserve the country’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves but which has had a devastating effect on agricultural yields .
The new government, however, retains the same prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s older brother, considered the leader of the clan in power.
On the other hand, the eldest of the siblings, Chamal, and the youngest, Basil, respectively lost the Ministry of Irrigation and the Ministry of Finance.
The prime minister’s eldest son, Namal, who headed the sports ministry, once touted as a future leader of the country, was also sidelined.
Seven ministers less
The new government now has 21 ministers, 7 less than the previous one, which resigned en bloc two weeks ago, in the face of the anger of the population castigating nepotism and the state of public spending.
Ministers are provided with several SUVs, a large contingent of bodyguards and unlimited allowances for fuel, housing and recreation.
New Finance Minister Ali Sabry is leading a delegation to Washington, United States, to start talks with the IMF from Tuesday, officials said.
Sri Lanka, in the grip of its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, defaulted last Tuesday on its $51 billion external debt and is seeking a $3-4 billion bailout from the IMF.
The unprecedented crisis, blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has robbed this South Asian island of its tourism bonanza, has been compounded by a series of bad policy decisions, economists say.
The country of 22 million inhabitants has suffered, for months, shortages of essential goods (food, fuel, medicines), long daily power cuts and record inflation.
To rectify the situation, the government began to ban, from March 2020, many import products in order to preserve its foreign currency reserves and use them for debt service.
Since a series of defections among his allies two weeks ago, President Rajapaksa has been deprived of his parliamentary majority.
Opposition parties, which then rejected an invitation to form a unity government led by Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa, said they would try to topple the government with a vote of no confidence in the coming weeks.