Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s victory in Sri Lanka’s September 21 presidential election would seem to show that the promise of a new political culture resonates deeply with Sri Lankans. The country’s ninth president, popularly known by his initials, AKD, dissolved Parliament three days after the Saturday poll, described by the Elections Commission as “the most peaceful ever.”
The National Peoples Power (NPP) alliance that Dissanayake leads held just three seats in Sri Lanka’s 225-member Parliament – including the one held by the new president. He lost no time in getting down to work, forming a Cabinet with those MPs. They divided 15 ministries between them and appointed several ministry secretaries to run the administration until a new Parliament is elected. A fourth MP newly appointed to the seat vacated by Dissanayake is also expected be assigned ministries.
On September 22, on her way out of the Elections Commission office, the NPP’s Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who took oaths as prime minister the next day, told reporters: “What we can do with a cabinet of four is limited. Within that, importantly, we stood for a new political culture, you would have seen that from the moment Anura sahodaraya (comrade) took oaths. We will act accordingly.”
The government that preceded Dissanayake’s had a peculiar formation, with a majority of lawmakers from the previous government of the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), while the president, United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, was the sole MP of an opposition party. Wickremesinghe was not elected president by popular mandate, but (constitutionally) by a majority of MPs in Parliament. This was in 2022 when the economy was in meltdown, and then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had stepped down amid a storm of public protests – known as the Aragalaya (meaning “struggle”).
In the two years that followed public frustration smoldered. Wickremesinghe’s interim government postponed elections for provincial councils and local government bodies, and passed controversial laws, with little transparency. It appeared as if the two parties in government supported each other for their mutual political survival.
That unholy pact proved short-lived. The country heads for parliamentary elections on November 14.
The IMF and the Election
Wickremesinghe, who came in a distant third in the presidential race, contested not from his once-formidable center-right UNP, but as an independent candidate. His confident rhetoric of having “saved the country” by successfully negotiating an IMF bail-out led SLPP MPs to defect from their party in numbers to back his candidacy.
These MPs appear not to have had their ear to the ground. As the result shows, Wickremesinghe’s campaign failed to impress voters, including from the middle class, hard hit by high taxes and spiraling cost of living in the wake of the IMF agreement. If the election was a “referendum on Wickremesinghe” as some foreign media dubbed it, then the verdict has been a unequivocal thumbs down.
Outside the Presidential Secretariat, where Dissanayake took oaths on September 23, the NPP’s Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa told reporters that “the IMF has expressed willingness to talk to a new government with the people’s mandate. If there are conditions that have been agreed to that are unfavorable to the people and the economy, they need to be amended. We got a people’s mandate that included that, we are ready to hold those discussions.”
Meanwhile IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva in a congratulatory message has assured the new president that the IMF stands “ready to assist Sri Lanka to achieve its development and reform goals, including under the ongoing IMF-supported program.” A sign of confidence came from business circles when the Colombo stock market on September 24 recorded its largest daily gain for the year.
Both Dissanayake and the Opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB)’s candidate, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, made campaign pledges to renegotiate the IMF deal if elected. In what turned out to be a two-horse race, Dissanayake won in 15 out of the 22 electoral districts with 5.7 million votes (43 percent, after the preferential vote count), while Premadasa won the remaining seven with 4.5 million (34 percent, after the preferential vote count). Wickremesinghe garnered 2.2 million votes (17.2 percent). The poll saw a high voter turnout of 79 percent.
It would seem that much of the frantic crossing-over of MPs from one party to another as the presidential poll drew near stemmed from their worries over securing nominations to contest the upcoming parliamentary election, rather than from disagreements on policy or principle. Nomination lists for the 22 electoral districts are drawn up by the party leadership. Many now find themselves without a party that will list them. The SLPP leadership has warned of disciplinary action against its MPs who decamped.
Those who crossed over to Wickremesinghe – typically with much fanfare and publicity – simply bet on the wrong horse. The NPP alliance as a matter of policy did not accept MPs looking to change sides.
Meanwhile, SLPP presidential candidate Namal Rajapaksa, son of former president Mahinda, came fourth in the poll, reflecting the party’s ebbing fortunes and the waning of parochial politics embedded in family rule.
In his televised address to the nation on September 25, Dissanayake said his government sought to build “a unified Sri Lankan nation that respects diversity, fully ending the era of division based on race, religion, class, and caste.” A better standard of living for all, children’s access to good quality schools and education, an honest and efficient public service, a social safety net for those with disabilities, improving women’s representation across institutions, and the need to improve the country’s image so that “the world respects our passport,” were among the other highlights of his speech.
Foreign Policy
The NPP election manifesto lists four points under the heading “Current Foreign Policy Stances”:
- We shall not allow any country or institution to use Sri Lanka’s land, Sea and Air spaces to threaten or risk the national security [of] any country in the region including India.
- We shall support to the UN adopted Two state solution [sic] to establish a Free Sovereign Palestinian State.
- We shall follow and implement [sic] to eliminate the threat of Terrorism, separatism, and Extremism.
- As a firm policy, Sri Lanka shall oppose foreign military bases and similar military agreements and militarizing initiatives in the Indian Ocean.
New Prime Minister Amarasuriya, responding to a journalist’s question on foreign policy, said they wanted “friendly relations with all,” and appealed to foreign partners to support Sri Lanka by bringing in investments “in a more transparent, non-corruptible way.”
In her remarks on September 22, she said:
Both India and China have been good friends to us in the past and we expect to continue with those friendly relations. India is our closest neighbor. We know that India is concerned on how our position and location can affect India’s security as well. We are aware, and sensitive to those issues.
We want friendly relations with all, but most importantly, what we expect from our foreign partners is that they support us at this moment, but also help us to bring in investments in a more transparent, non-corruptible way, that does not lead to further kind of debt crisis like what we’ve experienced in the past.
Image Makeover
On the campaign trail, it was evident the NPP was making a conscious effort to remake its image, which is wrapped up with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a constituent party also led by Dissanayake. The violence associated with the JVP’s armed insurrections of the 1970s and 1980s, and with the government’s crackdown, is still etched in memory of an older generation.
Possibly with the party’s history in mind, the president in his inaugural speech on September 25 acknowledged there may be some who had “doubts about us,” and expressed determination to “earn your trust through my actions.”
Having dedicated his victory to “all citizens of our nation,” Dissanayake added, “We honor and remember the courageous men and women of previous generations who made sacrifices, some with their lives, for this victory. I see this victory and the prosperous nation we aim to build as a tribute to their legacy.”
More than in rhetoric, hope that the new government will radically change Sri Lanka’s corrupt political culture would seem to lie in its stated intention of having no truck with the traditional parties that have taken turns in power – only to perpetuate the same style of oppressive, patronage politics.
“The NPP did not come to any agreement with other parties during the presidential election campaign and the people expect the party to continue same practice,” Secretary of the NPP Nihal Abeysinghe said on September 26, according to a news report. Hopefully, this would translate into new faces in a new Parliament with a more youthful profile – not one packed with proxies and relatives of those kicked out.