Sri Lankans from all walks of life rose up against the Rajapaksa regime in late March 2022 under the slogan ‘Gota Go Home’, insisting that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign. Shortages of essentials like petrol, diesel, kerosene oil, food and fertiliser had given them no choice other than to join long queues to obtain essentials or starve. The fundamental reason for the shortages was lack of foreign exchange due to mismanagement of the economy.
On 1 April 2022, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a temporary state of emergency, which gave security forces powers to arrest and detain ‘suspects’ at a spate of protests that had started in the capital Colombo and then spread across the nation. Two days later most of Sri Lanka’s cabinet resigned, isolating Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, the Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.
On 9 May 2022, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as protests escalated. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe as his replacement but this did little to quell the unrest.
Protests escalated in July when demonstrators occupied President’s House in Colombo, the official residence and work¬place of the nation’s president, causing Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee – to Singapore via the Maldives. He resigned on 14 July 2022 by email. New PM Ranil Wickremesinghe also offered to resign but the parliament elected Wickremesinghe as president on 21 July. On 22 July, Dinesh Gunawardene (son of the so-called Lion of Boralugoda, Philip Gunawardene, trade unionist, humanitarian and co-founder of the left-wing party LSSP) was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new prime minister.
The protest movement is determined to carry on until its participants reach the final objective – removing the Rajapaksa clan, including its henchman Ranil Wickremesinghe, from Sri Lankan politics.

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