{"id":43691,"date":"2022-04-20T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T02:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/audio\/2022\/apr\/20\/whats-behind-the-economic-implosion-in-sri-lanka"},"modified":"2022-04-20T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T02:00:16","slug":"whats-behind-the-economic-implosion-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=43691","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s behind the economic implosion in Sri Lanka?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An economic crisis in Sri Lanka is now threatening starvation for the poorest citizens. Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports on a disaster still unfolding<\/p>\n<p>As Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, the blame has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/apr\/01\/sri-lanka-protesters-try-to-storm-presidents-house-as-economic-crisis-deepens\">fallen at the feet of one man<\/a>: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, known to many as Gota.<\/p>\n<p>As the Guardian\u2019s south Asia correspondent <strong>Hannah Ellis-Petersen <\/strong>tells <strong>Michael Safi<\/strong>, Rajapaksa was elected in 2019 amid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/17\/sri-lanka-presidential-candidate-rajapaksa-premadas-count-continues\">nationalistic fervour and a wave of support<\/a> from the country\u2019s Sinhalese Buddhist majority. But over the past three years, under his watch \u2013 and what many are calling \u201ccriminal financial mismanagement\u201d \u2013 the economy has gone into freefall.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/audio\/2022\/apr\/20\/whats-behind-the-economic-implosion-in-sri-lanka\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An economic crisis in Sri Lanka is now threatening starvation for the poorest citizens. Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports on a disaster still unfoldingAs Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, the blame has fallen at the feet&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,674,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43692,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43691\/revisions\/43692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}