By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
Sri Lanka, to my mind, has always been a unique country politically, particularly for those in the Global South. It has defied a major political axiom: that countries with deep ethnic divisions leading to horrible civil wars virtually always devolve into brutal dictatorships, usually involving the military.
The island nation of 20 million is overwhelmingly Buddhist Sinhalese, with the Hindu Tamil community making up about 11 per cent of the population. The civil war that broke out in 1983 followed years of failed attempts to share power within a unified country. Tamil fighters, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), tried to create an independent homeland in the country’s north.
The group was eventually crushed in a 2009 government offensive. The war killed at least 100,000 on both sides and left many more missing. Hundreds of LTTE fighters, including top leaders, were allegedly killed after surrendering. A study by a United Nations panel of experts published in 2011 found up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of fighting.
This was not exactly conducive to electoral democracy. And it certainly left scars on the body politic. Yet there have been eight presidential elections since the war began and at no time was there a coup overthrowing an elected president, or the formation of a junta promising to end the conflict.
The country remains divided, which is only to be expected, but it is also in serious economic trouble, and this has seen the rise of extremist parties, culminating in the Sept. 21 election of a Marxist president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Two years earlier, crowds overran the presidential palace, forcing then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. For more than 10 years, the Rajapaksa family held a vice-like grip over Sri Lankan politics. The family appealed to the majority-Sinhalese nationalist base. So, for years, they survived allegations of corruption, economic misrule, widespread human rights abuses and suppression of dissent.
That changed in 2022, when a slew of policies set off the country’s worst-ever economic crisis. It defaulted on its loans, plunging the country into a crippling economic crisis marked by acute shortages of fuel and other basic goods. Ranil Wickremesinghe, an opposition politician, was appointed as president for the remaining two years of Rajapaksa’s tenure.
Wickremesinghe campaigned on his economic record in this election. While he was in office, he stabilized the economy and brought inflation down from a high of 70 per cent to about 0.5 per cent. He also negotiated a crucial bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to contain Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, raising taxes in the process. This did not go down well with the electorate. Levels of poverty in the country have doubled since the economic crisis erupted in 2022.
Which brings us to the surprising electoral victory of a relatively unknown candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who defeated both the incumbent, who ended in third place, and Sajith Premadasa, the son of a former president. Dissanayake, who headed an alliance of parties called the Jathika Jana Balawegaya (JJB) or National People’s Power, brought together 21 groups including political parties, youth groups, women’s groups, trade unions and other civil society groups.
“We will defeat those who use the influence of their family, their wealth, the influence of government,” he told a large crowd on the last day rallies were allowed ahead of the vote, which saw turnout of about 75 per cent.
To revive the economy, Dissanayake has promised to develop the manufacturing, agriculture and IT sectors. He has also committed to continuing the deal struck with the IMF to bail Sri Lanka out of the economic crisis while reducing the impact of its austerity measures on the country’s poorest. The main focus has been on the country’s $36 billion foreign debt, of which $7 billion is owed to China. Whether Dissanayake will be able to deliver on this program of economic sovereignty is to be seen.
He has managed to overcome trepidation over the violent past of his own political party, the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People’s Liberation Front. The JVP was founded in 1965 and carried out two armed insurrections against the Sri Lankan state in the 1970s and 1980s.
The 1987-1989 campaign, spurred by discontent among the youth of the rural lower and middle classes, precipitated a conflict marked by raids, assassinations and attacks against both political opponents and civilians which claimed thousands of lives.
Dissanayake comes from a working-class background in north-central Sri Lanka, far from the capital city of Colombo. His worldview has been shaped by his leadership of Sri Lanka’s student movement. Elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997, he became its leader in 2014 and has since apologised for the group’s violence during the so-called “season of terror.”
It has long been on the political fringe and only holds three seats in Sri Lanka’s 225-member parliament. To try to increase its presence, parliamentary elections will be held on Nov. 14.
But for the country’s Tamil minority, the future is not hopeful. Dissanayake has rejected giving more power to the northern and eastern areas where most Tamils live. He has also rejected investigating incidents during the civil war that United Nations investigators have described as possible war crimes.
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