An admirer of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, the leader of Sri Lanka’s left-wing coalition, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, was declared the winner of the presidential election with 42.3% of the vote on Sunday 22 September, the day after the vote. He clearly beat the leader of the opposition in parliament, Sajith Premadasa (centre right), 57, with 32.7% of the vote, and the outgoing president Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, with 17.2%.
Two years after the worst economic crisis in Sri Lanka’s history, 55-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayaka inherits a fragile country exhausted by the brutal and unpopular austerity policies of his predecessor. “The dream we have been carrying around for centuries has finally come true”rejoiced on Sunday afternoon on social network X, adding to the Sri Lankan people: “Together we are ready to rewrite Sri Lanka’s history”According to the electoral commission, his official inauguration will take place on Monday morning.
Silent since the announcement on Saturday evening of the first trends that predicted his defeat, outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe admitted his defeat on Sunday evening. “With great love and respect for this nation that I hold dear, I place its future in the hands of the new president”said in a statement. Sajith Premadasa’s entourage, for its part, admitted defeat as soon as the partial results were obtained on Sunday morning.
Even before his victory was confirmed, Mr. Dissanayaka announced on Sunday that he would not “would break” not the $2.9 billion (€2.6 billion) aid plan signed in 2023 with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) after lengthy negotiations.
Renunciation of armed struggle
Throughout its campaign, “AKD,” as its troops call it, stressed a message of distrust toward political elites. “corrupt” of the country, which in his eyes is responsible for its financial collapse in 2022. Over the weeks, this speech has convinced an increasing number of Sri Lankans.
“For the first time in Sri Lanka, power will be transferred from the hands of a handful of privileged and corrupt families to a government of the people”promised the AKD in its election manifesto. A proclamation that sums up the ambition of this son of a farmer, who was entirely trained in the Popular Liberation Front (JVP), Dissanayaka’s Marxist-inspired party.
In 1971, the JVP launched a first deadly uprising against the island’s government, which was quickly suppressed at a cost of 20,000 victims. Sixteen years later, the party took up arms again following a decentralisation law that granted powers to the island’s Tamil minority.
Coming from the Sinhalese majority, Comrade Dissanayaka rose to prominence as a leader of the JVP students. He recently said that he had escaped, hidden by one of his teachers, from the death squads that were hunting down the leaders of the guerrilla movement. This revolt ended in 1989, after having caused up to 60,000 deaths according to some estimates. When he took over the leadership of the JVP in 2014, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka put an end to the past and renounced armed struggle. “We assure the people of Sri Lanka that we will never again take up arms”declares.
Converted to market economy
To mark his break with his movement’s murderous past and broaden his popular base, he formed a coalition with other left-wing parties, the National People’s Power (PNP).
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He himself has largely adapted to the market economy, in particular to the idea of privatizing certain public companies. He recently mocked a “smear campaign” directed against his party “Who says we are going to nationalize everything, even cows?”
Its first electoral steps are modest. During the 2019 presidential elections, it obtained only 3% of the votes. A year later, it did not fare any better in the legislative elections, in which the JVP obtained only three seats.
But since the catastrophic financial crisis of 2022, the “AKD” and its coalition have been on the rise. Although it did not directly participate in the protests that led to the downfall of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, its party exploited the anger of the population until its victory in the presidential elections.
