Anura Kumara Set To Be Sri Lanka’s New President: The Power Shift from Right to Left, Elite to Working Class

Right-wing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power in 2019 to make Sri Lanka “great". Two-and-a-half years later, he fled in the middle of the night after angry people stormed his home over a bankrupt economy. Till then, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or JVP of AKD was a fringe Marxist party. Today, its leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won the Presidency.

It is a landslide victory for him if we compare the votes (just 3% in 2019) with today’s votes (over 43%). After he failed to secure a minimum of 50% plus one vote for an outright win, election commission of Sri Lanka had to count the second preference votes, a first in Sri Lanka’s presidential election history. The badly fractured mandate is likely to have a huge negative impact on the parliamentary elections likely to be held soon.

Anura’s father was a farm labourer from Anuradhapura district in north central Sri Lanka. It is a remarkable turnaround. Sri Lanka has effortlessly shifted from extreme right to extreme left, in just two years.

The power has shifted from the Colombo 7 elites to working class.

Sri Lanka has also dumped all its established political leaders — Rajapaksas, Wickremesinghe and Premadasa — creating a new political class by voting a commoner Anura to power. It is mother matter that the elites lost their power to working class because of their ego and internal conflicts. Sajith and Ranil together polled 65 lakh votes or about 51% of the total votes polled. They helped Anura to win, though unintentionally.

The 56 years old Anura or AKD is Sri Lanka’s second president from an extremely humble background. Before him, Ranasinghe Premadasa was the first president from a lower class background in 1988.

STUDENT LEADER, 2 POSTS IN 24 YEARS

Anura rose to prominence as a student leader in the 1990s espousing the idea of communism on the island. By then, JVP’s charismatic Marxist leader Rohana Wijeweera was dead and the JVP once most feared and banned terrorist organisation had returned to mainstream politics, promising to try democratic means to power.

His first break came in the year 2000 when he won a Parliamentary seat. A few years later, he was made a Cabinet minister in the President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga government. A year later he resigned from his post. Recently he was the opposition chief whip in the Parliament. These are the only two posts he has held since his entry into Parliament in the past 24 years.

His party JVP has just three MPs in Parliament and running a government before he goes for the Parliament elections in the next two-three months would be difficult for him. One of the three MPs, Professor Harini Amarasooriya is expected to be the Prime Minister for the timebeing. Their total lack of experience is a cause of worry for bureaucracy.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR INDIA

Anura is accused of being close to China in the past few months. He rubbishes all these allegations against him saying he is close to the people and no one else.

In a big development for both Anura and India, he had led a delegation of his party colleagues to India earlier this year. A suited and booted Anura had met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval and foreign secretary during his five-day visit. He later claimed that government of India sponsored the visit. This is the only high-level official engagement that India ever had with him.

The JVP is known for rabble-rousing and anti-India rhetoric. During the civil war, it was vehemently against India and any concessions to Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka.

It is yet to see the how Anura government is going to shape its India policy. Since India is Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour and a regional power, Anura can’t afford to lose its goodwill and support. In the recent years, some Indian businesses have invested in Sri Lanka and one has to wait and see how Anura administration is going to handle that given its history of a militant trade unionists.

THE CHALLENGES, LESSONS

Saliya Pieris, a leading lawyer and commentator, said, “It is now clear that Anura Kumara Dissanayake will be the next President of Sri Lanka. It has been a spectacular performance for him and the NPP which has transformed the political landscape of the country. AKD’s victory is a tribute to the millions of people who voted for him with a desire of real change for a country free of corruption, cronyism and favouritism where they and their children can live a safe and comfortable life. The new President will face many challenges in the days, weeks and months ahead when he assumes office, forms a government and then proceeds to dissolve Parliament and have a general election. The common sense and pragmatic wisdom he has demonstrated throughout his career and during his campaign, will hopefully stand in good stead during the years of his Presidency."

“AKD must be mindful of the pitfalls of the Executive Presidency and that he needs to exercise its vast powers in public trust. The new President will need to realise that as the President, he will have to be a unifying figure, recognising that nearly half of the voters did not vote for him, but that he is their President too. AKD will no doubt learn a lesson from the fate of Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was elected in a spectacular manner five years ago, but who had to depart from office unceremoniously because he failed to meet the aspirations and expectations of the people who voted for him," Pieris said.

The people have spoken. Their message is loud and clear that they want a new leader and a new political order, which is completely different from the old one.

Sri Lanka can’t afford to miss this historic opportunity to build a new country.