Anura Kumara Dissanayake signs documents after taking oath as Sri Lanka's new president during a ceremony, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (PTI Photo)
Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s election as President of Sri Lanka is an event of the times in Sri Lanka where such public weariness from economic hardships had set in regarding the old order of entrenched leaders and scions of dynastic political families that conditions were screaming for change. Unusual as it sounds, the strong showing by a Marxist leader of the hardcore Sinhalese party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) reveals that people were fed up with leadership that had led to a crippling national economic crisis.
As the leader of the JVP had spewed anti-Tamil and anti-India venom in days when its supporters were involved in insurrections in 1971 and 1987 will be piloting the island, power might just bring in sobering responsibility as well as realisation that economic growth cannot be achieved without help from industry, trade and tourism. A pragmatic centrism in policies is what he is expected to start his administration with.
A promise from the newly elected president — he became the first winner after a second and third preferential vote count in Sri Lanka — to work closely with both a magnetic China and a friend-in-need India is suggestive of the fact that the country needs not only friends but also money. Having led in revolutionary mode during the end days of the Rajapaksas at the height of the economic crisis, Mr Dissanayake may have advocated state intervention and closed-market economic policies.
It is debatable whether radical solutions will work in the modern world tending towards free markets and social justice and state welfarism to look after the disadvantaged. The president’s immediate challenge will be to further facilitate conditions to sustain the economic recovery, which the pro-West, pro-India liberal President Ranil Wickremasinghe managed well enough in ending the days of strife when people were out on the streets of Colombo in mass protests named ‘Aragalaya.’
It is for overturning the established order of the entrenched wallowing in dynastic politics and outlandishly corrupt ways in which the rich were invariably favoured that Dissanayake’s victory will be considered historic. While his background in radical, religion-based politics will remain a baggage that he must keep at bay, his performance as a president aware of the sensitivities of various religious and ethnic groups will be watched with interest.
Given the minuscule presence of the JVP in Parliament with three members in a house of 225, it stands to reason that the President would dissolve it quickly enough and have national polls conducted. Having vaulted from a 3 per cent vote share in the 2019 presidential polls, the JVP-led NPP alliance should expect to fare better. Since Sri Lankan ministers can only be named from among Parliament members, the president’s priority is clear.
Having come to power as the harbinger of change, Mr Dissanayake would be under pressure to punish the wrongdoers and the corrupt of previous governments like the Rajapaksas. What shape the foreign policy takes will be keenly watched, particularly in India whose envoy he received first on becoming president. What he does for his people, besides tinkering with taxation rates for the better off, will be of greater interest.
The Tamils, who constitute the largest minority, may have shown a greater preference for Sajith Premadasa and may have to walk the extra mile to mend fences if their demands for devolution of powers and a fair share of government spending on the north and the east are to get a fair hearing. It would probably depend on how much there is in the national kitty after having to service all the debts built up through Chinese infrastructure and India’s loans.
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
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