Row over MR residence turning to battle of wills

In September, 2005, two months before that year’s Presidential election, then Prime Minister and UPFA candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa signed a policy agreement with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) much of which dealt with abrogating any deals made by his predecessor Chandrika Kumaratunga with the LTTE and strengthening the country’s unitary status.

Others included abolishing the executive presidential system, closing the door to the “so-called liberal open economic policy” and a firm commitment not to privatise the country’s harbours, airports, state commercial banks, the Petroleum Corporation, Ceylon Electricity Board and all other Government establishments. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected President in November 2005, started a military campaign against the LTTE in 2006 which ended in 2009 and through it all, the JVP continued to support him, even though things had soured from what they were when the MoU was signed in 2005.

In 20 years since then, much has changed in the country with the JVP, which was then a fringe group, the ruling party now with its own Executive President in office but the Rajapaksas continue to be in the news, though for very different reasons.

Indictments were filed this week against MP Namal Rajapaksa on misappropriation charges in connection with the Krissh hotel project while his younger brother Yoshitha was arrested and released on bail in connection with a money laundering case.

The sons aside, it is Mahinda Rajapaksa who is more the person in discussion over the Government house he currently lives in. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has led the charge with a very public attack on the former President over his occupation of the residence on Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo 7. According to the President, the Government Valuation Department has estimated that the monthly rent for the residence is Rs. 4.6 million and wants Mahinda Rajapaksa to either pay the rent or quit the House.

Since the President’s remarks, there has been much debate on the matter with President Dissanayake in a later public meeting saying the Government would consider giving the former President a smaller house if he has no proper accommodation in Colombo while lawyers for the former President are insisting that the Government send in writing an eviction order.

Most Sri Lankans have a love-hate relationship with Mahinda Rajapaksa. He was the most loved political leader at one time, particularly in the aftermath of the defeat of the LTTE but into his second term, his popularity began to dwindle. His shock defeat in 2015 did not make him lose the affection of his supporters who went in packed buses to visit him at his house in Tangalle. In 2019 with the election of his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa as President, Mahinda became the Prime Minister but by then his magic had waned and reached the lowest depth during the 2022 Aragalaya which saw him resign in disgrace.

Since then, the Rajapaksa family has not been able to rebound even though Mahinda Rajapaksa remains the glue that holds the remaining supporters together. On his own he still commands the affection not only of his die-hard supporters but also the sympathy of many, who abhor what the Rajapaksas stood for, but at the same time remain bound to him by sentimentality.

The current Government no doubt is well aware that evicting Mahinda Rajapaksa from his residence will only help him gain sympathy which is probably why President Dissanayake has offered him a residence suitable for two people (Mahinda and Shiranthi Rajapaksa), doubling down on an earlier pledge not to provide housing to any former president.

Under the President’s Entitlements Act, ‘every former President and the widow of a former President, during his or her lifetime,’ is entitled to the ‘use of an appropriate residence free of rent.’ While the Government has the upper hand on this issue, the way it has been going about it is in a ‘bull in a China shop’ manner and not in the official manner in which it should have been handled. Now that the President himself has chosen to throw the gauntlet to Mahinda Rajapaksa, the days ahead will prove who gets the upper hand in what’s turning out to be a battle of wills.