In his first address to the nation on September 25, the presidential candidate of Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power coalition, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was sworn in as President on September 23, did a Vajpayee: he read out from a prepared text, haltingly, and seemed completely out of sorts.
Gone was the fiery speaker who could hold a massive crowd with his command over language and the manner in which he employed words for effect; gone was the rhetoric that had marked his election speeches across Sri Lanka. (Many MPs and journalists complained that after Atal Bihari Vajpayee was elected Prime Minister, he stopped his extempore and thoroughly enjoyable interventions in Parliament and outside. During his tenure, he almost always read out from the notes supplied to him.)
Dissanayake has clearly traded the “angry Sinhala man” image for a more sober “let-me-get-the job-done” person. After all, image is everything in this day and age of social media. The fact that Dissanayake has adapted well to the era of social media was apparent right on the voting day, that is, September 21.
The 55-year-old seemed to have taken a leaf out of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s book: his mother, supported by a woman on either side to help her walk, arrived at the booth in an autorickshaw (popularly called tuk-tuk in Sri Lanka). But the son, who was a prominent party leader even before the win, arrived in a luxury car, much like the National Security Guard-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”.
Candidate for “drastic change”
One more thing stood out in his address to the nation, which is an indication of where he stands on crucial issues affecting the country. There was no simultaneous Tamil or English translation of his speech, and there was no scroll, which translates the speech to both these languages.
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In a country where the Tamil minority fears the Sinhala majority even more after the obliteration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), this act was no oversight. This correspondent, who has been present at functions involving four previous Presidents over more than a decade, has always heard simultaneous Tamil and English translations of the address by each occupant of the office. It is a default setting that was overlooked on September 25.
This is in line with Dissanayake’s understanding of the “national question”—a common phrase used to refer to the Tamils’ desire for a political solution in the north and eastern parts of the island. Dissanayake has not spoken about a policy for ethnic reconciliation but believes that “national unity”, “economic development”, and “governance reform” will do the trick. This is the exact line that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had articulated to this correspondent before he became President in 2019.
This is what Dissanayake said soon after he assumed office: “Regardless of whether one identifies as Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, or Malay, our nation will not thrive until we create a practical environment where everyone can proudly say, ‘We are Sri Lankan citizens.’ We will not hesitate to implement the necessary constitutional, economic, and political reforms.”
“One of the things which stood out in Dissanayake’s first address to the nation was that there was no simultaneous Tamil or English translation of his speech. This says something about where he stands on crucial issues affecting Sri Lanka.”
There is no similarity between Dissanayake, a rank outsider who told a news television channel that he once sold articles in the local market, and toffee and cigarettes on trains to make ends meet, and Rajapaksa, who was an army officer and had a life filled with creature comforts. But both of them—as do all serious presidential candidates—have ignored the hopes and aspirations of the Tamil people. Yet Dissanayake has come up the hard way, with his relatives lost to senseless, state-sponsored violence and his reputation cemented by protests against the government and against “foreign intervention”.
The tag of rank outsider, which was also a cleverly managed image, has stuck to Dissanayake. But there can be an oblique explanation for the surge in his popularity: the COVID-19 outbreak affected middle- and low-income countries very badly, and the Sri Lankan government under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did a poor job of managing resources. The combination led to an economic downturn, which pushed an unprecedented number of Sri Lankan people back into poverty. Since Dissanayake was nowhere near the power centre, it was easy for people to look up to a politician who spoke their lingo, understood their problems, and empathised with them. For the record, the man speaks only in Sinhala.
A vendor watches the live telecast of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s first address to the nation at Galle Face Beach, Colombo, on September 25, 2024. | Photo Credit: IDREES MOHAMMED/ AFP
Even during the aragalaya (struggle) in 2022 against the gross mismanagement of the economy, Dissanayake was not a prominent face. Although it was suspected that the party he leads, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), had a role in the agitations, Dissanayake was comfortable allowing the “organic” protest to gather pace and direction on its own and did not seek to take ownership.
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. Dissanayake is an outsider in the sense that his party has never been in power. But he has been in parliament for over two decades. He was first elected to parliament in 2001 and has stayed in the House until now. In this period, he has had some responsibilities, including a short stint (just over a year) as Agriculture Minister between February 2004 and June 2005, when Chandrika Kumaratunga was President.
His stint in the Kumaratunga Cabinet was short-lived because he opposed Kumaratunga’s formula of working with the LTTE in the post-tsunami period in 2005 (the Tigers controlled major parts of the north and east of Sri Lanka at that time).
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The political vision set out by the JVP is highly problematic. The party claims that it is communist but excludes Tamils and Muslims from almost all realms of activity. Compared with Dissanayake and his JVP, former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa appear to represent the “lite” version of Sinhala chauvinism.
Sri Lanka-India relations
The bad news does not stop there. 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, but Dissanayake’s election dims the hope that the issues faced by the Tamils could be politically resolved.
And Dissanayake has to contend with the China factor though he has toned down his anti-India rhetoric significantly; he even visited New Delhi at India’s invitation.
“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 seems that in the days to come, “winging it” will have a new meaning for Indians dealing with a Sinhala-speaking President.
