The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks all but destroyed the island’s tourism industry. In the southern city of Galle, locals now seek their own Trump or Modi

Asiri Kumara stands on Koggala Beach with a fishing rod in his hand forlornly staring at the Indian Ocean waves. Despite his best efforts, there has been little to catch, and that’s not because of the monsoon rains that have been lashing southern parts of Sri Lanka for the past month.

What Kumara is hoping to catch does not come out of the turbid water, though; instead it arrives from distant parts of the world in cars and coaches. The 40-year-old former farmer makes a living giving tourists a glimpse of the Sri Lanka they want to see. For £10 a time, he and four friends jump on to vertical wooden poles erected at the water’s edge and pretend to be stilt fishermen, acting out an ancient tradition for visitors to capture on cameras and phones.

Lately however, the bountiful tide of tourists that once flooded in to watch Kumara and his colleagues in their role play has dried to a trickle.

“Most days we are lucky if just one group turns up. For three months we had nobody and spent the day sitting around playing cards. There were initially seven of us but things got so bad that two of the men left because they needed to earn money for their families,” said Kumara. “Before the Easter attacks, we could easily make £100 a day between us.”

It is almost 5pm and Kumara, who has been in place since sunrise, laments that it has been another disappointing day. A group of Chinese tourists arrived, paying a bit more than the standard fee so that they could climb on to the stilts to be photographed. As they clung nervously to them, a larger group of Europeans descended and manically took pictures without paying anything.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Asanka Mara, who dives off the rampart of a fort for tourists, hasn’t had a customer in four months. Photograph: Vivek Chaudhary/The Observer

Things are little better for many of the millions of Sri Lankans who depend on tourism both directly and indirectly, particularly along its lush southern coast, which is the centre of the industry. Like their compatriots, they awoke on a bright Easter Sunday morning to the horrors of a series of attacks by Islamist militants, who killed 253 people including 42 foreign nationals in churches and hotels across the country.

The tourist trade, a cornerstone of the nation’s economy and its third-largest foreign exchange earner, was decimated overnight. The wider economy was also hit: growth was reported at zero in the aftermath of the attacks following a slump in business activity and investor confidence.

Standing on the ramparts of Galle Fort, Asanka Mara is one of three men known as the “Crazy Jumpers”. For £15, they would impress tourists by leaping off the 16th-century fortress in the picturesque port city into the waters of the Indian Ocean below.

“We haven’t had a single customer in four months,” he said. “I still turn up, hoping that the tourists will return one day, but the other two guys don’t even bother coming. Our lives have been ruined and things are very difficult. I love jumping – it’s all I want to do – but I may have to give it up altogether and go and get another job.”

Following the attacks, an estimated 80% of hotel bookings were cancelled, and despite the best efforts of the industry, which has slashed hotel and airline charges, things have improved very little. Tourist arrivals were down 57% year on year for June, and down 71% for May, according to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nanda Gunawardana, director of the Induwara Sea Turtle Conservation Project, is spending his own money to feed the animals. Photograph: Vivek Chaudhary/The Observer

Even the nation’s wildlife has been affected. At the Induwara Sea Turtle Conservation Project near Galle work to rehabilitate injured animals and return them to the ocean is grinding to a halt. The organisation relies for its funding on tourists, who pay £2.50 each to visit, but since the attacks it has seen only two. Nanda Gunawardana, project director, said: “I’ve had to lay off staff and have been paying out of my own pocket to ensure that the turtles can be fed. We require 25kg of fish a day. We are just about surviving but if it continues like this, we’ll have to close.”

Following the end of the brutal 26-year civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels fighting for an independent state for Tamils, who make up 11% of the population, hopes were high that the country had turned a corner. Investment, mainly from China, flooded in, large new infrastructure projects were completed and tourism boomed. Last year, 2.3 million tourists visited the country.

The end of the war in May 2009 came at a heavy cost. The United Nations claims that some 45,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed during its final few months, while the number of deaths and disappearances in the course of the overall conflict is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Despite this and a political crisis that led to the dissolution of parliament last year, optimism for a brighter future endured, particularly among the Sinhalese community, who make up almost three-quarters of the 22 million population. But it came crashing down in the rubble of the Easter attacks.

Many Sri Lankans are now looking across the water to India – where Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has forged a reputation as a strong-arm nationalist – and to populist, firebrand leaders across the globe. The clamour has been reinforced by claims of weak leadership by the government which ignored intelligence reports it received two weeks before the Easter attacks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Empty sunbeds at Unawatuna beach in Galle. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

The island nation’s hopes of finding a Sinhalese Modi or Donald Trump lie with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a controversial frontrunner for presidential elections taking place later this year. As wartime defence minister, he is believed to have directly overseen the police and military, which have been accused by the UN, human rights groups and Sri Lanka’s own investigative agencies of crimes including torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings both during the Tamil conflict and after it ended.

Gotabya, as he is popularly known, who is the brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, also faces two lawsuits in the US for human rights abuses.

Rajesh Venugopal of the London School of Economics, a Sri Lanka expert who has just written a book called Nationalism, Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, said: “The Easter attacks changed the country’s political sphere. It’s clear that there’s a call for a Modi-type figure.

“Gotabya fits the bill perfectly. He’s a nationalist and an authoritarian who brought the war against the Tamil Tigers to an end with a no-nonsense approach. But he has blood on his hands and when it comes to war crimes, the buck stops with him. Sadly, this has not damaged his credentials with many Sinhalese Sri Lankans but actually helped him.”

The popular demand for strong-arm leadership was also underlined in August with the controversial appointment of Major-General Shavendra Silva as the new head of Sri Lanka’s army. A UN panel has accused the army division he led of extrajudicial killings of unarmed Tamil Tiger rebels during the final stages of the war, systematic torture of people in custody and the shelling of a hospital. He has denied the accusations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Normally bustling beaches are empty. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

The appointment was criticised by the United States, the UN and Tamil political and civil groups.

With Sri Lanka struggling to get back on its feet, a new ethnic fault line has also emerged with the Muslim community, which makes up just over 7% of the population. Following the Easter attacks, suspicion of them is high and many claim that they are being vilified and persecuted by the Buddhist majority. More historical issues with the Tamil community have also not been resolved.

Venugopal said: “Gotabya is going to tap into Sinhalese nationalism because he is not going to get the Muslim or Tamil vote. Political devolution that was promised to the Tamils has not been delivered, while a new dimension has emerged with the Muslims. I’m confident that tourism and the economy will recover but ethnic relations will remain fraught.”

As discussion rages about what type of leader Sri Lanka needs, for Kumara it is a simple case of having somebody who can bring the tourists back so that he can get back to be playing at being something he’s not.

“I just like being a pretend stilt fisherman,” he said. “It makes everybody happy and I get to earn some decent money. Whoever can do this for me will get my vote.”