If Gota doesn’t go home, the Executive Presidency may go out

“Go Home Gota” and/or “Gota Go Home” is the resounding clarion call that is currently motivating  and mobilizing  a number of protest demonstrations throughout  Sri Lanka.  The underlying thread is that  Sri Lanka’s Executive  President  Gotabaya (Gota) Rajapaksa should resign  and quit. The social media too is replete with demands of a similar nature. Even the          “Boney M” Group’s 1979 Album “Oceans of Fantasy” lead single “Gotta Go Home” has acquired a fresh lease of life in the internet among those who want Gota to go home. Indeed the repetitive refrain “Gotta go home, home, home, Gotta go home” sounds most appropriate to the prevalent domestic political situation.

The Boney M song also has the line “Going back home. Going back home”. That however does not seem possible at least  for now.  Gota  does  not want to go home! Chief Government Whip  and Highways  Minister Johnston Fernando  has stated in Parliament  that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not resign. “As a responsible government, we state that President Gotabaya will not resign from his post, under any circumstances,” Minister Fernando  reportedly said. Apparently President Rajapaksa feels that 6.9 million citizens of the country who voted  for him  have provided a mandate that cannot be overturned by mass demonstrations.

According to informed SLPP circles, President Gotabaya accepts  that the people are protesting  living conditions like shortages, rising prices, loss of livelihood decline of the rupee’s value etc. The people wanted these problems to end and their initial demonstrations were organic and genuinely spontaneous. However Gotabaya opines - according to SLPP circles - that  Sajith Premadasa  his chief rival at the 2019 hustings diverted the protest demanding  immediate action to resolve  these  problems into an agitation demanding the President’s resignation and a handover of Govt to the “Samagi Jana Balawegaya”(SJB).  Therefore he  invited the  opposition parties including the SJB to join a  new  interim Govt. This was spurned and the call for Gota to resign was  renewed. As such, Gota will “stay put and fight,” say these  sources.

Against this backdrop it is now becoming increasingly clear that President Rajapaksa is not going to resign and  can’t be compelled to   quit if he is not  willing to do so. It is in a sense a stalemate.