Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa says Chinese investments led to his downfall, in new book, The Conspiracy

Rajapaksa was forced into temporary exile after protesters stormed his official residence in 2022, following months of street protests over the island nation’s worst-ever economic crisis.

In a self-published account of his downfall, The Conspiracy, Rajapaksa defends his government’s economic policies, which forced an unprecedented foreign debt default and saw months of severe food and fuel shortages.

Instead, he said, “Chinese funded infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka after 2006 brought in an element of geopolitical rivalry” that precipitated his overthrow.

“It would be extremely naive for anyone to claim that there was no foreign hand in the moves made to oust me from power,” Rajapaksa wrote.

China is also Sri Lanka’s biggest single bilateral lender, owning around 10 per cent of the island’s foreign debt.

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Rajapaksa was once esteemed among the Sinhala Buddhist majority for helping end Sri Lanka’s long civil war in 2009 while serving as the top defence official during his brother Mahinda’s presidency.

He was elected in a landslide in 2019, but his popularity crashed in tandem with Sri Lanka’s economy less than three years later, as supermarket shelves stood empty and days-long queues formed at petrol stations.

Political commentator Kusal Perera said Rajapaksa’s downfall was due to his own inept handling of the economy.

“He was popular as a Sinhala-Buddhist leader thanks to media hype, but he was simply unable to deliver,” Perera said.