He had been elected on the back of a chauvinistic roar of ultranationalism. But in the end Sri Lanka’s strongman president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was reduced to making a meek, humiliating escape under the cover of darkness, refusing to even address his own people before he fled.
As Sri Lankans awoke to the news on Wednesday morning that their beleaguered president had departed to the Maldives on an air force jet on the day he had promised to finally resign after months of protests, the mood in the country was one partly of relief, and partly of rage.
