{"id":116132,"date":"2021-07-15T15:40:41","date_gmt":"2021-07-15T22:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116132"},"modified":"2021-07-15T15:40:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T22:40:41","slug":"sri-lankas-rajapaksa-dynasty-is-not-as-secure-as-it-appears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/07\/15\/sri-lankas-rajapaksa-dynasty-is-not-as-secure-as-it-appears\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka\u2019s Rajapaksa dynasty is not as secure as it appears"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>The Economist<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The family that runs everything is running out of cash<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/img\/b\/1280\/720\/90\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/print-edition\/20210717_ASD001_0.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Since winning&nbsp;the presidency in a landslide nearly two years ago, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has worried not that he has too many relatives in government, but that he has too few. One of the 72-year-old\u2019s elder brothers, Mahinda, himself president for ten years until a surprise election defeat in 2015, is prime minister. Another, Chamal, is minister for irrigation. Chamal\u2019s son, Shasheendra, is minister of state for paddy and grains, organic food, vegetables, fruits, chillies, onions and potatoes, seed production and high-tech agriculture\u201d. Mahinda\u2019s son, Namal, is minister for youth and sports. And state minister for digital technology and enterprise development. And everything else, to judge by his hyperactive Twitter feed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there is always room for one more Rajapaksa, 69-year-old Basil above all. Gota\u201d and Mahinda acknowledge him as the brains and organiser-in-chief of the family. He devised the electoral strategy behind its return to power, founding a new party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (slpp), which used digital wizardry to rally chauvinists from the ethnic majority, the Sinhalese\u2014all while in prison on a corruption charge stemming from his time as economy minister (his detractors called him Mr 10%\u201d). On July 8th he was back in the cabinet.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>https:\/\/www.economist.com\/asia\/2021\/07\/15\/sri-lankas-rajapaksa-dynasty-is-not-as-secure-as-it-appears<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist The family that runs everything is running out of cash Since winning&nbsp;the presidency in a landslide nearly two years ago, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has worried not that he has too many relatives in government, but that he has too few. One of the 72-year-old\u2019s elder brothers, Mahinda, himself president for ten years until a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}