After completing his studies at the University of Western England at the age of 21, Nuzly Hameem began to work as an engineer at a civil engineering company in Sri Lanka about seven years ago. Like other young people around the world, the college graduate just wanted to start a promising career and build a new life with his skills.
However, when the economic crisis in Sri Lanka worsened earlier this year, Hameem realized he had to do something more than just going to work every day.
"We always had been disgusted with these politicians who would be involved in these things. But then all of a sudden, it was like: 'you need to do something because life had been pretty hard with time and we had power cuts for like 13 hours.' The first day I went to protest because I had power cuts until 12 o'clock in the night, or sometimes until three o'clock or six o'clock in the morning. And I had been waiting for 30 hours for fuel. So I was like: 'let me do something about it.' And that's how I actually ended up being in a protest. And ever since then, I didn't stop," Hameem, 28, told Sputnik.
Gradually, the young engineer became more and more actively involved in the protests where demonstrators demanded the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
"Most of the days, I've been working until 5 p.m. and then I would go to protest to see what’s happening. But there were certain days I had to leave work and then come back to the office, because there had been things happening at the protests, such as police brutality. Sometimes, I had to go to the protests at 2 p.m. because that’s when everything started and come back to work and finish later at night until 8 p.m.," he said.
Although his direct supervisors had been rather accommodating and allowed him to leave work for the protests, Hameem understood that his company must be facing a lot of pressure from the government because of his involvement in the protests.
"The immediate managers didn’t really make a fuss about it. As long as you finish your work, there wouldn’t be a problem. They wouldn’t tell you to stop protesting or something like that. But you can see the changes. They have been facing pressure, because the police came to my office to ask for my personal details. And most of the businesses in this country depend on the politicians. So you get the kind of idea," he said.
It became clear that his active involvement in the protests would not stand well with his company. That is why Hameem decided to quit his job voluntarily on Tuesday to fully dedicate himself to the cause of the protests. He had been hosting webinars about the protests on social media and took part in a number of high-level meetings between the activists and the opposition politicians.
As he was among the 20-30 protesters who had been actively organizing different events during the protesters, Hameem admitted that his activism could make it difficult for him to find a new job in Sri Lanka.
One Rajapaksa Down Each Month
After the mass protests started in Sri Lanka in late March, the first major "victory" for the protesters came on May 9, when Mahinda Rajapaksa, a brother of the president, was forced to resign from the post of the prime minister.
Exactly a month later, another brother of the president, former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa announced his resignation from his parliamentary seat.
According to Hameem, the protesters have been trying to build on the momentum and secure the final victory on Saturday, when they hope they could force the president to resign.
"On July 9, we’re planning to end what we started. We have named it as ‘the end game.’ We think we can finish all of this by this weekend by sending the president home. It could be a coincidence. But Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned on May 9. Basil Rajapaksa resigned on June 9. So we’re expecting to send Gotabaya Rajapaksa away on July 9. All this number 9 sentiment coming into play," he said.
In addition to the existing protesters who were mostly the younger generation, people from all walks of life in Sri Lanka also began to join the movement against the president.
"At this point, the monks, the priests, the Bar Association, Tamils, Muslims, Sinhalese, and all kinds of students, everyone [is joining the protests]. Today, around 500 priests started a hunger strike. And the supreme court rejected the request from the president and the police to stop the protests. Everything is on the people’s side," Hameem said.
At the same time, the protesters in Sri Lanka also hoped to rally support from the international community by calling on people in major cities in the world, including Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Melbourne, Paris and Zurich, to come out and show solidarity with the movement on Saturday.
Hameem explained why international support for the movement in Sri Lanka would be crucial, because it could help avoid possible harsh military crackdowns from the president.
"If he chooses to do that kind of thing [military crackdown], it would probably backfire. I get that a lot of people have talked about what happened in Myanmar. But to do it in a country like Sri Lanka, where not a single dollar of foreign currency is left, if he decides to go for the military route, when the international community completely withdraws their support, he would leave people to starve and die. I think that’s a bad idea for him because if he wanted to rule, he would still need a country to rule. With everything going on, people might kill each other for a single piece of bread," he said.
Power to the People
Following the resignation of the former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as the new prime minister in Sri Lanka on May 12.
Although Wickremesinghe’s appointment offered some hope for the president to cling onto power by trying to resolve the economic crisis in the country, the performance of the new prime minister in the past two months had been disappointing.
"Initially, when Ranil Wickremesinghe came up, certain set of people who had this old mindset, especially the older generation, thought Ranil might do something different. The momentum and support for the protests actually went down a little bit. But with time and it’s been almost two months, people started to realize that Ranil could not do anything. He’s been doing exactly the same thing as Gotabaya has been doing for the last two years. Everything has gone really bad and people don’t have fuel or food. Food prices have tripled. And there’s no gas to cook. People started to realize it’s the same thing. And people refuse to go back to the same routine that has been going on in the last 74 years," Hameem said.
The new prime minister admitted this week publicly that Sri Lanka had entered negotiations with the International Monetary Fund as a bankrupt country.
The protesters came up with an Action Plan to address the country’s ongoing economic crisis. According to the proposal from the protesters, a new interim government led by a "People’s Council" would take over following the resignation of both the president and the prime minister.
The interim government would introduce a series of measures, such as distribution of basic life necessities, debt alleviation for the vulnerable like farmers and tax reforms, to resolve the economic crisis.
A new constitution with reforms on the power of the president and the election process should also be introduced through a referendum under the interim government, which needs to introduce the necessary economic measures within 6 months and complete the constitutional reform within 12 months.
The protests would continue until all the listed goals are achieved, the proposal said.