Rajapaksa puts the blame on India for electoral defeat

Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has blamed India, the US and European countries for his humiliating defeat in the January election.

“It was very open, Americans, the Norwegians, Europeans were openly working against me. And RAW (India’s Research Analysis Wing),” Rajapaksa told the Hong Kong-based “South China Morning Post” in an interview.

“Both the US and India openly used their embassies to bring me down,” Rajapaksa said ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to the country.

A media report from Colombo soon after Rajapaksa’s defeat in the January 8 election had said that a RAW official was instrumental in uniting rival political parties — the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP) — against him during the polls.

According to the report, the unnamed official was also asked to leave the country.
India had rejected the report saying that all the normal tenure of an Indian diplomat in Sri Lanka is three years and all officials who have been transferred during last year have completed that.

“It’s a normal transfer,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesman had said.
Rajapaksa, who was defeated by his ex-aide Maithripala Sirisena, at that time had said that he did not know all the facts.

In his interview on Thursday yesterday Rajapaksa said, “I asked the Indians, ‘Why are you doing this? It’s an open secret what you are doing’. I had assured them that I would never allow the Sri Lankan soil to be used against any friendly country, but they had other ideas,” he said.

He also defended Chinese infrastructure projects which were started in the country during his regime.