Anura Dissanayake’s historic ascent signals the arrival of change

But he has to contend with high expectations on the social and economic fronts while his opponents watch his every step.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake addressing supporters at his last public rally before the election, in Colombo on September 18. | Photo Credit: ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP

On September 23, 55-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayake took oath as Sri Lanka’s ninth Executive President in a modest ceremony at the presidential secretariat. The popular election was the first since the country faced fuel lines, daily power cuts, severe inflation, and a shortage of drugs and essential goods during its worst economic crisis in recent years. It was also the first time the public voted since mass protests forced the resignations of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as President, and his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, as Prime Minister.

Although Dissanayake’s victory has been described as a “landslide”, an “earthquake”, a “political tsunami”, or a “seismic shift”, his margins are less impressive than headlines imply. For the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, a presidential candidate failed to secure more than 50 per cent of votes in the first round of counting—compelling the election commission to consider preferential votes in a second round. In the first round, Dissanayake secured 5.6 million votes (42.31 per cent), as against the 6.9 million that Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured to win the 2019 presidential election, or the 6.2 million votes that Maithripala Sirisena polled in 2015 to become President.

Three-way contest

Dissanayake’s slim margin is partially explained by the fact that the election was a three-way competition, instead of the straight contest that presidential elections typically boil down to. Dissanayake’s main contender, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, secured around 33 per cent of the votes. Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose long-standing leadership struggles with Premadasa led to a split of their common party in 2020, secured about 17 per cent. Dissanayake’s margins can also be explained by his rivals’ use of powerful negative marketing campaigns.

Dissanayake’s party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has Marxist-Leninist origins, although traditional leftist parties have often questioned the JVP’s ideological commitments to Marxism and the JVP founder’s interpretations of Leninism.¹

Under the leadership of its revolutionary founder Rohana Wijeweera, the party undoubtedly had a violent past. In 1971, the JVP led an anti-state insurrection that was swiftly crushed. In 1987, however, the JVP mounted a more protracted armed insurgency against the state.² This insurrection led to state retaliation that was several times more violent and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of men and women, including JVP cadres and sympathisers and sometimes innocent bystanders.

In the latest election, hysteria amounting to a “red scare” brought back memories of that violence. But although Dissanayake was part of student political movements and participated in student protests in 1987, he was only inducted into the party’s Central Committee in 1997 and appointed to the Politburo in 1998, after the party had distanced itself from such violence and had been mainstreamed into electoral politics.

JVP under lens

The JVP’s Sinhala-nationalist leanings have also come under scrutiny with this election. Historically, the JVP has oscillated between class critique and nationalism for ideological fuel. It opposed the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accords promising devolution to the provinces, and played vital roles in scuttling the peace process between the Sri Lanka government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) between 2000 and 2005; in disbanding a tsunami aid distribution agreement between the government and the LTTE in 2005; in advocating for a complete military solution to the ethnic conflict; and in opposing President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s devolution proposals in 2000.

Like the other southern presidential candidates, Dissanayake was not expected to hold alleged war criminals accountable or to devolve land and police powers to Tamil-dominated regions. Yet, the JVP refrained from Sinhala-Buddhist ethnic outbidding in the recent election, and the three top election contenders avoided anti-minority and ultranationalist rhetoric that were a large part of the 2019 presidential election. In its current form the JVP is unlikely to be as ultranationalist as it was in previous decades.

On October 6, Dissanayake visited the St. Sebastian’s Church in Katuwapitiya where the Easter Sunday attack occurred in 2019. After the visit, he said on X: “We will ensure a fair, transparent investigation which will bring justice to the victims.” | Photo Credit: X.COM/ANURADISANAYAKE

Contemporary JVP’s politics cannot easily be surmised by reference to its history. Not only has it responded dynamically to the post-crisis economic discourse, the last five decades have seen important shifts in the party’s leadership, alliances, base, and policy.³

New support

The rural educated youth, with whom the JVP ranks originally swelled in the 1970s and the 1980s, are today deradicalised and willing participants of consumerist culture as a result of increased Internet and mobile phone penetration. Meanwhile, semi-urban populations and an emergent middle class became vital new constituencies for the JVP in the 1990s.

A major development in 2008 saw vocally racist ultranationalists leave the party to form the National Freedom Front. And in 2012, a socialist faction left the JVP to form the Frontline Socialist Party. In 2019, the JVP also formed an alliance with diverse groups to broaden its electoral appeal, including women’s groups, youth groups, and civil society organisations. It was under the banner of this broader alliance, called the National People’s Power (NPP), that Dissanayake contested in 2024 and from which his choice of Prime Minister also emerges.

Dissanayake’s detractors recalled the JVP’s history to warn that his victory would unleash either revolutionary or anti-minority violence, or alternatively, a protectionist, anti-market economic policy that would send the country spiralling back to the fuel and gas cylinder queues of 2022. A frenzied international media rushed to characterise Dissanayake as Marxist or Marxist-leaning in post-election headlines, without much consideration of its current policies.

Highlights

• Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a 55-year-old former Marxist rebel, has been elected as Sri Lanka’s new president in a surprising upset that reflects widespread disillusionment with the political elite.
• Dissanayake’s JVP-led coalition, despite its leftist roots, now advocates pro-market reforms and social progressivism, aiming to steer Sri Lanka through its ongoing economic crisis while promising systemic change.
• The new president faces formidable challenges, including implementing crucial economic reforms, addressing corruption, and managing a fragile economy, all while contending with skepticism about his party’s past and lack of governing experience.

The NPP’s manifesto, its most updated policy statement that is a result of intra-coalition negotiation and a social contract between voters and Dissanayake, contains policies that are at odds with its avowedly Marxist history. It states, for example, that the NPP will introduce pro-market reforms, increase the ease of doing business, encourage free trade agreements, promote foreign direct investment, improve trade through export diversification, and develop the country’s port facilities and its capacity as a trading and logistics hub.

Economic leanings

Party associates, who often refer to this manifesto in debates, interviews, and public gatherings, also reaffirmed that the NPP will work with the International Monetary Fund, widely considered a neoliberal institution.

Dissanayake’s recent appointments of economic advisers signal that the party is taking its new business-friendly, pro-market positionality seriously. Meanwhile, his appointment of Dr Harini Amarasuriya, a feminist academic with progressive views on minority issues, as Prime Minister demonstrates the party’s commitment to social justice and its intent to further grow its voter base to fill a void in liberal political representation.

Dissanayake with IMF officials on October 3. He expressed commitment to achieving the IMF programme’s goals. | Photo Credit: X.COM/ANURADISANAYAKE

The NPP manifesto contains policies on legalising safe abortion, abolishing the gender wage gap, and increasing the representation of female politicians in parliament, and is far more progressive than can be expected of the socially conservative ultranationalist JVP of the past.

While headlines about the extent of Dissanayake’s victory are misleading, this is the first time that the JVP is holding such a large sway in electoral politics. In the 2015 parliamentary election, it managed to secure only six parliamentary seats; in 2020, it was able to retain just three seats. In contrast, if Dissanayake’s 2024 presidential victory translates into parliamentary seats, the NPP would have secured 105 out of 225 seats in parliament.

Governance expectations

There is, therefore, uncertainty about how the JVP-led NPP coalition will govern after the general election in November, how diligently it will abide by its manifesto, and how dynamics within the coalition will impact policy implementation. If governance runs into rough weather, it is not clear whether the alliance will revert to previous reincarnations and strategies that might have favoured planned economies, isolationist foreign policy, romanticisation of the agrarian economy as a solution to food insecurity, abandonment of the IMF programme, or even minority scapegoating.

In the run-up to the election, Dissanayake’s opponents stressed the importance of experienced governance in steering the country through its ongoing economic crisis. Wickremesinghe, for example, highlighted his own experience as a six-time Prime Minister. Dissanayake, by contrast, has only served as a Minister of Agriculture, Land and Livestock, and that too for about 14 months between 2004 and 2005. Analysts, thus, have little by way of a governing record to base their predictions.

In the weeks leading to the general election, it is clear that Dissanayake wishes to dispel the fears about violence related to his party. Rohana Hettiarachchi, executive director of People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections, described the just concluded presidential election as the most peaceful in the country’s history. One of Dissanayake’s messages to his supporters at his final rally at Nugegoda, a Colombo suburb, was to remain non-violent regardless of electoral outcomes; post-election he urged supporters to celebrate peacefully.⁴

In the interim period between presidential and parliamentary elections, Dissanayake has also exercised caution in governance. He has not overturned too many economic policies introduced by Wickremesinghe, who made significant progress in stabilising the nominal side of Sri Lanka’s economy after he took over from Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022.⁵

His only questionable move thus far has been an apparent pause, without justification, on much-needed reforms in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Dissanayake has retained the former Secretary to the Treasury and the central bank Governor, who is credited with reining in inflation after excessive money-printing in previous years.

Within the first six months of Wickremesinghe’s appointment, a fuel distribution system was created, power cuts were shortened, and gas and essential goods shortages ended. In March 2023, an IMF Extended Fund Facility programme of around $3 billion was approved. In the second half of 2023, GDP growth revived.^{6 7 8}

Government revenue collection also improved following tax increases implemented in 2022 and 2023, and the country recorded a current account surplus as tourist arrivals and migrant remittances increased, although debt payments remained suspended and import restrictions were still in place.^{9 10}

Commendable caution

Dissanayake’s caution is commendable given the historically anti-state and anti-ruling class proclivities of his party as well as the levels of classism and arrogance faced on the election trail.¹¹ For example, Wickremesinghe, while emphasising the progress made under his presidency in stabilising the economy, warned of a “bottomless abyss” to which citizens would return should he not be elected, and claimed that “Ranil and Ranil alone” could make lives better.

Wickremesinghe’s campaign rhetoric was laced with elitism. In a pre-election interview, the former President remarked that he funded the expansion of Dissanayake’s school when he was Education Minister while his relative and political mentor, former President J.R. Jayawardene, funded Dissanayake’s university. The interviewer echoed the incumbent’s condescension in response, saying: “Now that kolu gataya [little boy] from Thambuttegama is running for President.”

How Dissanayake won

It was, however, Dissanayake’s “outsider” status, humility, and nobody-to-somebody character arc that captured voter imagination in a country disillusioned by its political elite. Dissanayake, who was schooled in Thambuttegama in Anuradhapura district, does not come from a politically connected family. While his top three political rivals—Wickremesinghe, Premadasa, and Namal Rajapaksa—hail from powerful political families, Dissanayake’s father was an office aide in the Government Survey Department and his mother a homemaker.

In the aftermath of a crisis that stripped the middle class of social mobility and saw poverty levels double in 2022, Dissanayake’s origins, quiet confidence, and oratory skills were reassuring. Prior to the election, voters across the country began to feel the burden of austerity measures: higher taxes, increased electricity and water tariffs, and poor social protection mechanisms. In 2023, over a million electricity lines were cut during sweltering heatwaves, mainly in poorer households that could not afford higher tariffs.¹²

While headline inflation subsided to single digits from an average of 46.4 per cent in 2022, the average index was still over 90 per cent higher in 2023 than in 2021. Since wages did not keep up with rising prices, purchasing power was limited and poverty traps loomed over or ensnared low-income households.¹³ With over 27 per cent of households facing food insecurity as voters headed to polling booths, Dissanayake’s call for a “system change” struck a chord.

Shift in political culture

In his person, if not in policy, Anura Kumara Dissanayake most closely embodied the system overhaul and shift in political culture that Sri Lanka’s citizenry yearned for in the widespread protests that gripped the country in 2022. His strong anti-corruption platform resonated with voters frustrated by repeated corruption scandals, political impunity, and elitism. “We don’t have the experience of making the country bankrupt…. [But] we will gain experience in building the country,” Amarasuriya said shortly after Dissanayake’s victory.

In policy, Dissanayake and Premadasa have much in common. Both agree that Sri Lanka must continue with its IMF programme while improving social protection for those most vulnerable. Both promised to take swift legal action against the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday attacks, in which more than 300 people were killed on April 21, 2019, and both pledged to establish a public prosecutor’s office to reduce conflicts of interest in the justice sector.

While neither convincingly pledged to hold alleged war criminals accountable, both promised to abolish the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law that is hostile to minority communities. Both also pledged to abolish the Executive Presidency if elected.

And critically, both their parties have been constructive and responsible in opposition, supporting legislation that was critical to the country during the last two years, while contributing productively to necessary economic dialogue in parliament.

Protesters stand on top of the office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo on July 13, 2022. | Photo Credit: ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS

While Dissanayake is now reaping the fruits of rational economic policy implemented just before his takeover, as well as mild weather and a drop in global fuel prices, he is yet to be tested.

His supporters await the promised results on corruption cases and the Catholic belt, where he swept the election, will expect justice for the Easter Sunday attacks.

Unenviable position

But Dissanayake will have to contend with a crippled justice sector, the inefficiencies of a state bureaucracy destroyed by successive years of populism, and the time-consuming banality of due process. In the interim, his less-constructive political opponents are likely to become louder and bolder, waiting to seize on missteps in policy implementation or uncontrollable shifts in the external environment, whether escalating conflicts in West Asia leading to rising fuel prices or unpredictable local weather events that ravage harvests.

All along, Dissanayake will also need to sustain reform momentum to ensure economic growth under incredible constraints. As victorious as he might be now, Dissanayake’s position is unenviable.

Amita Arudpragasam is a writer, researcher, and independent policy analyst from Sri Lanka.

FOOTNOTES

1. Rajesh Venugopal, Sectarian Socialism: The politics of Sri Lanka’s Jantha Vimukthi Permuna (JVP)
2. Although the insurrection of the 70s was more socialist in nature, the insurrection of the 80s opposed Indian intervention in Sri Lanka’s armed conflict and was characterized by Sinhala nationalism.
3. Nirmal Dewasiri, Mainstreaming Radical Politics in Sri Lanka:The case of JVP post-1977
4. https://srilankamirror.com/news/akds-final-rally-in-nugegoda/
5. After protesters compelled then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign on July 14, 2022, the opposition was united in calling for the abolition of the executive presidency, a key demand of protestors, as a precondition to a peaceful transfer of power. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe undermined these efforts when he took over as interim Prime Minister and then as acting President, a deal that guaranteed his political survival along with impunity for the deeply unpopular Rajapaksas. Parliamentarian and lawyer M.A. Sumanthiran accused Wickremesinghe of “shameful conduct” in “violating public trust.” In July 2022, acting President Wickremesinghe was nominated President with the support of the SLPP, which still maintained a supermajority in parliament. His political dependence on parliamentarians from the SLPP—the Rajapaksa’s political vehicle—earned him the title ‘Ranil-Rajapaksa’. Despite some attempts to distance himself from discredited parliamentarians prior to elections, Wickremesinghe was seen as a politician who might deliver on economic reform, but not the political crisis at the heart of Sri Lanka’s economic woes.
6. GDP contracted in 2023, but growth revived in the second half of 2023 and is expected to continue in 2024 and 2025. Inflation decelerated to single digits last year following a peak in 2022 and will remain below 10% in 2024 and 2025. See: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/957856/sri-ado-april-2024.pdf
7. As measured by the Colombo consumer price index. See: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/957856/sri-ado-april-2024.pdf
8. Food inflation eased to an average of 12.1% compared to 64.7% in 2022 and a peak of 94.9% in September 2022.
9. Tourism earnings rose sharply to $2.1 billion, up by 82.0% from 2022 as tourist arrivals rebounded by 107%, albeit remaining below the 2017–2018 average of 2.2 million arrivals.
10. Remittance inflow rose by 57.5% to reach $6.0 billion, still below the pre-pandemic average of $7.0 billion in 2017–2019.
11. Although Wickremesinghe’s 2024 manifesto stressed that apart from himself, “no political party or leader came forward to take the challenge of rebuilding the country” because “they thought it was impossible”, this is false.
12. A major component of IMF austerity measures was the elimination of energy subsidies and harsh increases in electricity tariffs which rose by 75 per cent in August 2022, another 66 per cent in February 2023, and an additional 18 per cent in July that year.
13. ADB report.