Reflections | Corruption, incompetence and greed led to Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s downfall – and it’s a story we’ve heard before

Sri Lanka has been reduced to financial ruin and political chaos by the Rajapaksa clan, whose members ran the country like their own family business for years. The Rajapaksas, who rose to prominence after the end of the 26-year civil war in 2009, had run the beautiful island nation into the ground through a combination of mind-boggling incompetence and venality.

On July 9, then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his official residence in the capital Colombo, shortly before demonstrators stormed the compound. In photographs and video footage seen all over the world, ordinary Sri Lankans, most of whom were suffering the effects of a collapsed economy, availed themselves of the swimming pool and stately rooms of the president’s house in a visible gesture of defiance against Rajapaksa and his rapacious family.

When the rebel armies, led by stablehand turned rebel leader Li Zicheng, breached the walls of Beijing, the capital of the Ming dynasty, in the spring of 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor was sipping his wine. He said to his attendant eunuchs, “How my people will suffer!” When one of his attendants urged him to surrender, Chongzhen stabbed and killed him with his sword.

Sword in hand, he said to Changping: “Why did you have to be born in my family!” before hacking off her left arm. Miraculously, Changping survived the sword attack, as did Yuan, though both died in the months that followed.

When dawn broke the following day, the palace bell summoned the emperor’s ministers and officials to court for their daily audience. With the city burning outside the palace walls, no one came. With a eunuch in attendance, Chongzhen took to the hillock behind the palace, where he hung himself from a tree. He was 33.