Hard road ahead for President-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayake
The result of the ninth Sri Lankan presidential election uncannily followed a pattern that has unfolded in other countries in South Asia recently.
Seemingly strong and well-entrenched leaders suffered humiliation at the hands of weaker opponents.
In June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to achieve the target of 400 plus seats in a House of 543 members, even as the mainstream media blared that he would sweep. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to a get a majority on its own and had to depended on crutches provided by two allies to form a government.
In August, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, an iron lady credited with putting the country on the economic fast track, was ousted and driven out of the country by a university students-led mass movement. Her winning the January 2024 parliamentary elections with a thumping majority was to no avail.
And now in Sri Lanka, experienced politician and administrator President Ranil Wickremesinghe was mauled by political greenhorn Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power (NPP) in the 21 September presidential election.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake won with 42% of the vote, while Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) came second with 32%. Wickremesighe got only 17.2%.
Toiling under trying local and global conditions from July 2022 to September 2024, President Wickremesinge had restored normal life in Sri Lanka after it was crippled by an unprecedented shortage of essential commodities in 2022.
The man-made economic crisis happened when Sri Lanka had barely recovered from the ravages of COVID-19 and also an international economic crisis triggered by the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Wickremesinghe secured an IMF package of US$3 billion with support from Western nations and India. He also received US$ 4.5 billion from India to keep Sri Lanka afloat.
And yet, Sri Lankan voters consigned Wickremesinghe to third place in the presidential poll.
Key features
The ninth Sri Lankan Presidential election will stand out for the following reasons:
(1) It is the first presidential election in Sri Lanka in which no candidate received the 50% plus votes necessary to win in the first round. For the first time, the second preference votes were counted to decide the winner.
(2) It is the first time that a candidate with little or no administrative experience, and from a very small party, has emerged as the single largest vote-getter.
The most experienced candidate was Wickremesinghe, who had held the Finance and Defence portfolios, in addition to the Premiership and the Presidency. Dissanayake, on the other hand, was Agriculture Minister for only a year in a coalition government long ago. He has had only parliamentary experience, though he often led the opposition charge against the government. Even Premadasa had only been Housing Minister.
Sri Lankan voters defied conventional ideas about voter behaviour. It was thought that people would vote based on loyalty to parties and as whole families rather than as individuals. It was also assumed that voting would be influenced by the rural-urban divide or by class and cultural factors. However, the voting pattern this time showed that Dissanayake had support across social, ethnic, regional, and religious divides.
Another popular pre-election theory was that economic factors would determine the voting pattern. It was expected that Wickremesinghe, having turned the economy around with the help of the IMF bailout and its prescriptions, would reap a rich harvest of votes. But that was not to be!
On the contrary, non-economic factors proved to be decisive. These included: (1) a yearning for a new face, (2) a thirst for total change, even without a clear idea of the nature of that change, and (3) anger against Wickremesinghe for running the government with the support of MPs belonging to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), led by the “corrupt” Rajapaksa family.
Wickremesinghe’s plea that he had to seek the help of the SLPP to pass legislation in parliament to save the economy fell on deaf ears. He lost because he was tainted by his association with the Rajapaksas. The fact that Namal Rajapaksa was one of the 38 candidates contesting against him did not help to wash off the taint.
Dissanayake as President
Given the fact that Dissanayake was trying to appeal to every section of Sri Lankan society, not just the working class, he toned down his Marxist or radical left-wing rhetoric and assured each group that he would not be hostile to them.
Such assurances were given to the corporates, who were anxious about his stance on the private sector. He told the Tamils in Jaffna that he would decentralise power to them.
Dissanayake’s nostrum was “Change.” But he never defined or indicated a pathway to it. The inchoate notion of “change” was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by people of all classes, who were thirsting for “change from the old corrupt order and corrupt politicians.”
Dissanayake had never been in power to become corrupt.
His voters now expect him to hound the “corrupt” Rajapaksas and their coterie, and to recover the money they allegedly stashed away overseas. This is a tall order.
Dissanayake has promised to revise the IMF’s prescriptions to make them more tolerable for the poor by increasing direct cash transfers, lowering taxes, etc.
However, experts say that any drastic change in the IMF’s prescriptions, or any refusal to abide by them, will only result in Sri Lanka having to approach the IMF with a begging bowl for the 17th time in its history.
Sri Lanka has not moved beyond the freebie culture, but the government has no money to give out anymore. It is unclear how Dissanayake hopes to bring relief to the people when tax concessions cannot be limitless.
Furthermore, it is not clear what Dissanayake intends to do when he says that the IMF’s prescriptions would be amended to make them more people-sensitive.
As the people have voted for him expecting tangible relief, the burden on him to deliver will be very heavy.
Additionally, the issue of renegotiating the IMF bailout could strain Sri Lanka’s relations with the US, India, and even China, as these countries back the IMF programme.
India had sent its External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman to talk to the IMF on Sri Lanka’s behalf. India had formally stood up for Sri Lanka, as did China. Any bid to change the deal will upset the applecart.
Relations with India
As a Marxist, Dissanayake has been a natural ally of China, but his party—especially its hard core, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)—has an anti-Indian tinge.
The JVP’s interest has not been the promotion of China’s interests in Sri Lanka, but rather whipping up or exploiting anti-Indian sentiments among the majority Sinhalese community.
Dissanayake cut his teeth in agitation politics in 1987 when the JVP was leading street battles in Colombo against the India-Sri Lanka Accord of that year and the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to implement a scheme of power devolution for the minority Tamils.
During his election campaign Dissanayake pointed out that the Sri Lankan market is flooded with Indian goods and that this must be stopped. He also said that the grant of the 99 giant oil tanks in Trincomalee to India should be annulled and that global tenders have to be floated for their development and use.
He has stated that the projects awarded to the Adanis should be reviewed, as they were not based on international tenders.
However, when speaking to Indian media, Dissanayake promised that his government would not take any actions that endanger India’s security and that he recognises the importance of India in the region.
It will be a challenge for the hard-core Marxist, Sinhala nationalist, and anti-Indian Dissanayake to keep all interests satisfied, whether in Sri Lanka or abroad.
