This week will see the opening of the 350-meter-tall (1,155-foot-tall), green and purple-colored Lotus Tower in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo. The tower is reported to have cost approximately $113 million to construct. The controversial tower has become a potent symbol of the Rajapaksa clan’s closeness to Beijing.
This is due to the fact that the tower is one of several “white elephant” projects that were built with Chinese loans during the administration of the former president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was removed from office in July following months of protests over the severe economic crisis facing the island nation.
Since the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government of Sri Lanka began constructing the edifice in 2012, the construction of the tower has been dogged by allegations of fraudulent practices. In order to finance his failed infrastructure projects, Gotabaya Rajapaksa took out large loans from China.
One of these projects was the Lotus tower, which the state-owned Colombo Lotus Tower Management Company has now chosen to open to the public in order to reduce its losses. “We are unable to keep this locked up.
The upkeep expenses are extremely high “Prasad Samarasinghe, the chief executive, stated to the media. He continued by saying, “We want to earn the upkeep of the facility and develop this into an entertainment center.”
The structure has come under fire from the regional media due to the fact that the communication tower would neither cover nor improve the existing transmissions in Sri Lanka. The media in Sri Lanka referred to it as a “towering story of pride and waste” and a vanity project undertaken by Rajapaksa. According to these reports, Rajapaksa wanted to construct a clone of Beijing’s 405-meter Central Radio and TV tower but was unable to do so successfully.
The current economic crisis in Sri Lanka, which has resulted in significant protests around the country this year, has been partly blamed on China’s debt. Over ten percent of Sri Lanka’s $51 billion in external debt, which the country announced in April it would default on, is comprised of borrowings from Beijing.
