Beautification, governance, and spectacle in post-war Colombo

Abstract

Abstract This chapter charts the shifting role played by Colombo during and after Sri Lanka’s years of civil conflict. The central areas of the city are ethnically and religiously heterogeneous, and for many years served as a power base for the United National Party (UNP). Since economic liberalization in the late 1970s, Colombo has grown a belt of middle-class suburbs, which are mono-ethnic and Sinhala Buddhist dominated. After the war ended in 2009, Gotabaya Rajapaksa launched a campaign of beautification which resulted in the clearance of low-income areas and the relocation of the urban poor to new high-rise buildings away from the centre. This appeared to bolster his support substantially among the new Sinhala suburbanites in the 2019 election. It clearly delivered political dividends in the urban suburbs, as evidenced by Rajapaksa’s success in the 2019 election, though this has subsequently proved to be a weak foundation for securing long-term political dominance, and in mid-2022 Colombo emerged as a site for mass protest, leading to the resignation of the Rajapaksa brothers.

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