Dissanayake, once associated with the armed rebellion, made a place in the minds of people due to his reputation of struggle and sticking to his word. before the elections 22 Together with the organizations they formed a front called National People’s Power (NPP).… A large section of the Sri Lankan electorate has voted in accordance with Aragalaya’s spirit of fundamental change. He has expressed his hope for a new dawn through a hard left alternative.
Anura Kumar Dissanayake becoming the President of Sri Lanka is an extraordinary event. For the last four decades, the country was trapped in the web of separatism and extreme nationalism. During this period, questions of livelihood never came to the center of political discussion. Governments continued to implement arbitrary economic policies. The result was the severe economic crisis of 2021–22, which resulted in Sri Lanka defaulting on international debt for the first time in its 73-year history of independence.
In 2022, due to the historic Aragalaya (people’s rebellion), the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to resign in chaos and flee the country. Aragalaya’s message was that there should be a fundamental change in the customs and policies of the country. But the ruling classes again succeeded in managing politics from behind the scenes. Under the emergency provision, a new President was elected through Parliament as per the choice of the Rajapaksa family against whom the public revolt had erupted.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) got only one seat in the 2019 parliamentary elections. Wickremesinghe himself had tried his hand in the Presidential elections twice before and had faced defeat. But political manipulators made him the new President of the country.
Neither any new beginning was expected from Wickremesinghe, nor did he take any initiative in this direction. Adopting the well-worn way out of the economic crisis, he took refuge in the International Monetary Fund. In March 2023, the IMF agreed to provide a loan of three billion dollars to deal with the debt crisis. The first installment of $330 million was sent immediately. Meanwhile, assurance was received that other lenders like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, etc. will provide another loan of $3.75 billion to Sri Lanka.
But as is the practice, the IMF imposed strict conditions instead of giving a new loan. Following those conditions in letter and spirit, Wickremesinghe government
Big cut in pension
Income tax was increased by 36 percent
Food and energy subsidies were abolished
Electricity duty increased by 65 percent
The Wickremesinghe government also agreed to privatize SriLankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, and Sri Lanka Telecom. Wickremesinghe had promised to implement this after the elections.
What was the impact of these decisions of Wickremesinghe government, pay attention:
According to the World Food Program (FPO), 8 million Sri Lankans – more than a third of the population – suffer from food insecurity today. Hunger is widespread, especially in rural areas.
More than half the population is forced to spend more than 70 percent of their income on food.
According to think tank Verite Research, thousands of middle class families have gone below the poverty line.
The World Bank estimates that the poverty rate will remain above 25 percent for the next several years.
More than three lakh Sri Lankans left the country in 2022. Among them there were a large number of skilled workers like doctors and IT professionals.
According to the World Inequality Lab, the top 10 percent of the population in Sri Lanka collects 42 percent of the income, while it controls 64 percent of the country’s wealth. The bottom 50 percent of the population accounts for only 17 percent of income and only four percent of personal wealth.
The crisis and IMF conditions have not affected the top ten percent of people. His wealth has increased during this period also. That means only the lower and middle class have been hit.
Is it any surprise that there have been continuous protests in Sri Lanka, towards which the Wickremesinghe government has adopted a strict attitude. Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has been continuously active in these protests. JVP, along with other organizations, has continued to protest against the IMF’s conditions. JVP leader Anura Kumar Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, promised before the elections that if voted to power, he would renegotiate the loan agreement with the IMF. Wickremesinghe opposed this promise, while opposition party SJB leader Sajitha Premadasa remained silent on it.
The background of the latest election results was formed from this situation. This aspect has proved decisive in the presidential election. Apart from this, AKD’s long political career has given him the credibility due to which he has emerged as a hope for the distressed people.
Dissanayake, once associated with the armed rebellion, made a place in the minds of people due to his reputation of struggle and sticking to his word. Before the elections, together with 22 organizations, he formed a front named National People’s Power (NPP). Dissanayake has now become the President of Sri Lanka after achieving a historic and to some extent surprising victory as the NPP candidate.
Before we proceed further, it would be appropriate to take a look at Dishanayake’s political career:
- Disshanayake, 56, was born in a daily wage laborer family. Despite living in poverty, his father put full emphasis on his son’s education. He became the first youth from his area to obtain a university degree. He took this degree in Physics.
- It is said about Dishanayake that even today he cannot speak English fluently. They do all the communication in their mother tongue Sinhala.
- Dissanayake became active in politics during his student days. He was influenced by Marxist ideology and started his career from the Maoist line.
- In 1987–89, the JVP launched an armed insurgency against the “imperialist and capitalist” governments of then Presidents JR Jayewardene and R Premadasa. Disshanayake participated in it.
- But in the 1990s, JVP made itself an underground party. JVP participated for the first time in the 1994 elections.
- This aspect should be kept in mind that the morale of the communist movement around the world had fallen due to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and China’s change of path. As a result, political parties became victims of disorientation. The direction that JVP took next cannot be understood in isolation from this broader phenomenon.
- The JVP was a marginal force in politics since the 1990s. He was never counted among the claimants to power. But 2022’s Aragalaya changed the whole story. Aragalaya became the architect of such a phenomenon which has destroyed the traditional parties, while the power of the country has come into the hands of the NPP.
How much AKD will be able to implement its promises will be decided by several conditions. AKD has informed the Election Commission to prepare for parliamentary elections as soon as it assumes power. He has already promised that he will use the special powers of the President to dissolve the present Parliament and hold new elections. However, his promise is to end the presidential system in the country and return to the parliamentary system, which was in force in Sri Lanka till 1977.
But they will be able to do all this only if NPP gets sufficient support in the parliamentary elections. If this does not happen, it will be difficult for him to fulfill any promise of change in the customs and policies of the country. In that situation his status will become that of a ‘lame-duck’ (lame duck i.e. disabled) President. Even after getting support in the parliamentary elections, he will face challenges like the judiciary. The experience of countries with electoral democracies around the world is that the judiciary acts as a major obstacle in the way of any pro-people and progressive action.
In this respect, the story of Sri Lanka is no different from the rest of the world. The main phenomenon in many countries with electoral democracy today is that corporate control over power has become stronger, due to which governments have become instruments of corporate interests instead of being autonomous units that coordinate among various interests. In this context, traditional centre-left and centre-right politics have become incapable of providing any distinct alternative. The result is that no matter who you vote for, no matter which party comes to power, the basic policies do not change.
This was recently experienced in a country like France, when the real left option got the most support from the voters. But after that, centrist, right-wing and far-right parties joined hands to stop the Left. President Emmanuel Macron appointed the leader of a right-wing party that finished fourth in the elections as Prime Minister. Since then, in huge demonstrations in France, people have been seen carrying placards on which it is written – Our vote has become irrelevant.
This is the story of France, the same is the story of almost all the countries with electoral democracy. That is why one of the phenomena today is people’s disillusionment with traditional parties without alternatives. Because of this, increasing support for the far right and hard left has become a phenomenon. The latest example of this is Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party received unprecedented support in three state elections. At the same time, the alliance of newly emerged left leader Sara Wagenknecht pushed the traditional left to the margins by securing third place in every election. Overall, this is a sign of the widening political rift in polities.
This is a global phenomenon and the situation in Sri Lanka cannot be understood in isolation from it. Just as people elsewhere are turning to traditional politics without any alternative, the same has happened in Sri Lanka. Here he had a hard left option like France, which he has adopted. This is as much a positive support for the Left agenda as it is a rebellion of the people against traditional alternative politics. At present AKD has emerged as a symbol of this rebellion.
It is well known that re-negotiating the terms of the agreements made with institutions like the International Monetary Fund is not an easy goal. Probably till date no party or leader of any country has been able to accomplish this task. The example of Syriza of Greece is in front of the world. NPP is an alliance of 22 parties and organizations in which not all have the same ideology. SYRIZA emerged as a left alternative. The voters of Greece handed him power. But the Syriza government laid down its arms before the trinity of IMF-European Central Bank-European Commission. Then in Sri Lanka, it is not yet clear what will be the parliamentary status of NPP.
However, the point of the latest developments is not the challenges it faces or the question of how much AKD will be able to achieve. The gist of this development is that a large majority of Sri Lankan voters have voted in accordance with Aragalaya’s spirit of fundamental change. In this sequence, they have attacked the representative parties of the ruling class. He has expressed his hope for a new dawn through a hard left alternative.
It is possible that the expectations placed on AKD may be shattered. But the central character of that despair will not be AKD. The central theme of his story will be to expose the real character of the present democracy. People have rejected traditional parties today. Tomorrow, when they will understand that the roots of the problem actually lie in the system – in that structure of the system in which elections have become a drama and in which the vote of the common voter does not make any difference in the customs and policies of the government, then then They will also look for an alternative to the system.
In this sense, the world is at a new stage today. The consensus imposed in the 1990s is breaking down everywhere. This is breaking the despair of the working class. The limitations of the parties conducting electoral politics are being exposed everywhere. At present, people are giving a chance to the new options available within this system. If those options are able to change something, then the credibility of this system will be saved. Otherwise, the world will witness a new kind of political phenomenon.
In the eyes of people who see and understand the world from the perspective of dialectical materialism, this is a part of the natural process of evolution. This is the period when the anti-thesis of the thesis of capitalist democracy is being prepared. In Sri Lanka, AKD, JVP and NPP represent this opposition.