When a Marxist party that got only 3 percent of the votes in Sri Lanka’s presidential elections in 2019 wrests the mandate in 2024, it indicates a foundational shift in popular choice. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the 56-year-old candidate of the National Peoples’ Power coalition, achieved this with the narrowest of margins as second-preference votes came into play for the first time in eight presidential elections since 1982.
Till now, his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna was at the political fringe, having led armed insurrections twice in the 1970s and 80s. Over the years, Dissanayake managed to temper the party’s radical streak and make it more acceptable. His party was briefly in power in coalitions led by presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. However, the transition from an agitational frame to one of leading the government is not easy, as the new president will soon find out. His ability to deliver on his promise of lowering taxes and enhancing ease of living while aligning with IMF’s conditionalities is yet to be tested.
Lanka has decisively taken a left turn, spurred by Dissanayake’s promise of cleaning up the system and ensuring probity in public life. He became the prime beneficiary of the youth uprising in 2022, better known as the Aragalaya movement, following a severe shortage of food, fuel and foreign exchange at a time when the Covid pandemic had sucked out tourism revenue and reduced the nation to a basket case. The riots that followed ejected the arrogant and corrupt Rajapaksas from power. But the wily Rajapaksas installed their proxy Ranil Wickremesinghe in the presidential palace. In the first polls after Aragalaya, all of them were blown away by the tempest of democracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to greet Dissanayake, saying he looked forward to working closely with him to strengthen the multifaceted bilateral cooperation. It was India’s $4-billion bailout that saved the bankrupt island in 2022. But anti-India rhetoric was the president’s calling card in the run-up to the elections. The corollary is his pro-China leaning, as can be expected from a Marxist party. India will have to play the waiting game, as it did with Maldives, and give Dissanayake time to realise that India is a benevolent regional power and the first responder in times of crisis as against the usurious other.