2024 has been a big year of elections, Kai Wagemans takes us to Sri Lanka to explain the significance of the recent presidential election and to shine a light on events outside our student bubble.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake (also known as AKD) won his presidency in Sri Lanka this September, representing the National People’s Power (NPP), which is a leftwing coalition of groups, with the Janatha Vimukhti Peremuna (JVP) at its core. About 75% of the 17 million eligible voters participated. Dissanayake himself saw a remarkable rise in support, securing 43% of the vote—a drastic increase from the 3% he received in the 2019 election.
This is the first time in Sri Lankan history where the winning candidate didn’t win the majority of votes in the first round, and instead had to progress to the second and third round of counting. Single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes in the past.
Reaching out to Dr Asanga Welikala, Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Welikala noted that “If the centre-right vote was not divided between two rival candidates, it is unlikely that the new President would have won.”
Thus, the parliamentary election on 14 November will be crucial to determine Dissanayake’s presidency. If the NPP does not secure a parliamentary majority by then, “it will have to enter into cohabitation arrangements with the opposition, which is always a difficult and unstable form of governance.”
Looking at the NPP, it appears that Dissanayake created the party as a manoeuvre to distance the JVP (of which he became leader to in 2014) from its bloody past, and to tone down its hard-left stance.
JVP was founded in 1965. Then a radical Marxist-Leninist party, it led failed Marxist-inspired insurrections in 1971 and 1987-89. These insurrections became some of the bloodiest periods in Sri Lankan history, with widespread killings and political assassinations, including those of intellectuals, artists and political opponents. In response to the rebellion, the government retaliated with brutal crackdown, killing at least 60,000 people, many of them senior JVP leaders, the most famous being the party’s founder, Rohana Wijeweera.
Dissanayake and his party re-established their reputation following the 2022 nation- wide protests, which came to be known as the Aragalaya movement. The power vacuum created by the resignation of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa (who was ultimately forced to flee the country) paved the way for Dissanayake, pushing his party to grow into a major political force. Harini Amarasuriya, Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, reflected that “in many ways, AKD reflected the kind of struggles that came up in the Aragalaya: the fight against corruption, an anti-establishment mood, and a desire for a more accessible, transparent, accessible politics.”
Reflecting on the party’s success during the movement, Dr Welikala observed that Dissanayake’s success was more out of “aptitude for captivating rhetoric, rather than convincing policy detail.”
Moreover, Dissanayake’s party has been described by analysts as having
“absolutely no democratic stance other than covering their Sinhala Buddhist racism by saying they stand for unity”. During the Tamil separatist movement in the 2000s, JVP opposed the rebel movement and backed the government under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lankan Tamils have long been asking for accountability for war crimes committed during the civil war. Whilst the NPP advocates for ethnic and religious equality today, its repute for anti-minority Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism remains contested.
On top of that, Sri Lanka faces financial trials, with an urgent need to revitalise the economy brought down by the mismanagement and corruption of previous presidents. In his first speech to the nation, Dissanayake said that he will seek immediate talks with the IMF to “achieve stability”. He also pledged to start discussions with creditors to facilitate the country’s debt structuring.
When it comes to what to expect from this election, Dr Welikala concluded: “In a challenging economic context, we will have to wait and see if they possess the governing competence required to meet those challenges – as well as the challenges of constitutional reform in a plural polity and the challenge of delivering legal accountability for large-scale corruption and profligacy of past regimes.”
“Anura Kumara Dissanayake 2023” by Bunty456 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Beyond Edinburgh: The Sri Lankan Election
2024 has been a big year of elections, Kai Wagemans takes us to Sri Lanka to explain the significance of the recent presidential election and to shine a light on events outside our student bubble.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake (also known as AKD) won his presidency in Sri Lanka this September, representing the National People’s Power (NPP), which is a leftwing coalition of groups, with the Janatha Vimukhti Peremuna (JVP) at its core. About 75% of the 17 million eligible voters participated. Dissanayake himself saw a remarkable rise in support, securing 43% of the vote—a drastic increase from the 3% he received in the 2019 election.
This is the first time in Sri Lankan history where the winning candidate didn’t win the majority of votes in the first round, and instead had to progress to the second and third round of counting. Single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes in the past.
Reaching out to Dr Asanga Welikala, Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Welikala noted that “If the centre-right vote was not divided between two rival candidates, it is unlikely that the new President would have won.”
Thus, the parliamentary election on 14 November will be crucial to determine Dissanayake’s presidency. If the NPP does not secure a parliamentary majority by then, “it will have to enter into cohabitation arrangements with the opposition, which is always a difficult and unstable form of governance.”
Looking at the NPP, it appears that Dissanayake created the party as a manoeuvre to distance the JVP (of which he became leader to in 2014) from its bloody past, and to tone down its hard-left stance.
JVP was founded in 1965. Then a radical Marxist-Leninist party, it led failed Marxist-inspired insurrections in 1971 and 1987-89. These insurrections became some of the bloodiest periods in Sri Lankan history, with widespread killings and political assassinations, including those of intellectuals, artists and political opponents. In response to the rebellion, the government retaliated with brutal crackdown, killing at least 60,000 people, many of them senior JVP leaders, the most famous being the party’s founder, Rohana Wijeweera.
Dissanayake and his party re-established their reputation following the 2022 nation- wide protests, which came to be known as the Aragalaya movement. The power vacuum created by the resignation of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa (who was ultimately forced to flee the country) paved the way for Dissanayake, pushing his party to grow into a major political force. Harini Amarasuriya, Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, reflected that “in many ways, AKD reflected the kind of struggles that came up in the Aragalaya: the fight against corruption, an anti-establishment mood, and a desire for a more accessible, transparent, accessible politics.”
Reflecting on the party’s success during the movement, Dr Welikala observed that Dissanayake’s success was more out of “aptitude for captivating rhetoric, rather than convincing policy detail.”
Moreover, Dissanayake’s party has been described by analysts as having
“absolutely no democratic stance other than covering their Sinhala Buddhist racism by saying they stand for unity”. During the Tamil separatist movement in the 2000s, JVP opposed the rebel movement and backed the government under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lankan Tamils have long been asking for accountability for war crimes committed during the civil war. Whilst the NPP advocates for ethnic and religious equality today, its repute for anti-minority Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism remains contested.
On top of that, Sri Lanka faces financial trials, with an urgent need to revitalise the economy brought down by the mismanagement and corruption of previous presidents. In his first speech to the nation, Dissanayake said that he will seek immediate talks with the IMF to “achieve stability”. He also pledged to start discussions with creditors to facilitate the country’s debt structuring.
When it comes to what to expect from this election, Dr Welikala concluded: “In a challenging economic context, we will have to wait and see if they possess the governing competence required to meet those challenges – as well as the challenges of constitutional reform in a plural polity and the challenge of delivering legal accountability for large-scale corruption and profligacy of past regimes.”
“Anura Kumara Dissanayake 2023” by Bunty456 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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