Creeping Coup Or Civilian Democracy?
The TV News of December 8th 2021 showed Army chief Shavendra Silva striding out if the Ministry of Agriculture, trailed by the state minister and the Minister of Agriculture. The newscast of Dec 9th showed the Army chief saying that the Task Force on combatting Covid-19 had been switched to organic agriculture.President Gotabaya Rajapaksa seems to be turning the Sri Lankan state into military-occupied territory. The process could be termed a creeping coup from above.
On the morning of December 9th an upmarket English-language newspaper contained not one but two columns, which, based on very different empirical material and from very different perspectives, rang the alarm bell about the prospect of military rule. What political perspectives for resistance issue from these manifest contemporary phenomena and accompanying warnings