Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s rise to the presidency in Sri Lanka as a candidate of the National People’s Power coalition has been seen by many analysts as nothing short of magic. After all, in the 2019 presidential election he had secured a mere 3.2 per cent (418,533 votes) of the votes polled. This time, at the end of the first round of counting, Dissanayake had 42.31 per cent of the vote, and Sajith Premadasa 32.76 per cent. A count of the second preference votes took Dissanayake past the required 50 per cent plus one for victory.
His popularity can have an oblique explanation: the COVID-19 pandemic and the poor management of resources by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after 2019 pushed an unprecedented number of Sri Lankans back into poverty. Dissanayake, as the head of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), presented himself to the people as a politician who spoke their lingo, understood their problems, and empathised with them.
Even during the Aragalaya [protests] in 2022, he allowed the “organic” protests against the mismanagement of the economy to gather pace and direction on their own rather than take ownership of the unrest.
But Dissanayake’s success lies in the fact that between July 2022 and September 2024, he managed to convince the people that he was the outsider and the candidate for “drastic change”—similar to the “drain the swamp” campaign that won Donald Trump his first presidency.
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The 55-year-old is careful about his image, and seems to have taken a leaf out of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s book: His mother arrived at the polling booth in an autorickshaw (popularly called tuk-tuk in Sri Lanka). He himself, arrived in a luxury car, much like the NSG-protected Modi. The United National Party, which supports President Ranil Wickremesinghe, mocked him in a post on the social media platform X and said in Sinhala that “no one will be fooled by drama like this.”
The fact remains that Dissanayake is no outsider. He was first elected to parliament in 2001 and has remained an MP since then. In this period, he had a stint as Agriculture Minister between February 2004 and June 2005, when Chandrika Kumaratunga was the President.
Does India need to worry?
No Tamil political party in Sri Lanka can support Dissanayake or the politics he stands for. His stint in the Chandrika cabinet was short-lived because he opposed her formula of working with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the post-tsunami period in 2005 (The Tigers controlled a major part of the North and the East at that time). This act was looked upon as his reluctance to help the Tamils who were also badly affected by the tsunami.
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The more problematic part for Dissanayake is the political vision set out by the JVP. The party claims that it is communist but excludes Tamils and Muslims from almost all realms of activity. Compared to Dissanayake and the JVP, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, appear to be a “lite” version of Sinhala chauvinism.
Dissanayake made his name during the anti-India protests of 1987, opposing the India-Sri Lanka accord, which remains the only document on which peace has been negotiated so far. There are several flaws in the solution that was suggested and adopted on the Tamil question, but Dissanayake’s election means that there can be no progress on a political solution for Tamils. Dissanayake may have toned down his anti-India rhetoric significantly—he even visited New Delhi at India’s invitation—but he will have to contend with the China factor. According to two sources this correspondent spoke to, China pushed his his case with both Tamils and Muslims during this election.
“India can do business with Dissanayake,” said an Indian official. “After all, at the end of the day, no one can wish us away,” he added. It appears “winging it” will have a new meaning for Indians dealing with a Sinhala-speaking President.
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