Britta Petersen / Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s South Asia Office
Sri Lanka’s presidential election is less than four weeks away. Yet things are remarkably quiet on the island to the south of India. To date, not a single one of the parties putting forward a candidate for the 21 September vote has published its manifesto. There is a lack of reliable opinion polls when it comes to predicting the victor. “It will be a tight race. That’s all we can say for certain at the moment”, says Bhavani Fonseka from the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think tank in the capital Colombo.
Britta Petersen directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s South Asia Office in New Delhi.
There are currently three candidates who stand a chance of winning the election: the incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe (75), an establishment figure from the United National Party (UNP), which was founded in 1946; Sajith Premadasa (57), leader of the opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB); and Anura Kumara Dissanayake (55) from the People’s Liberation Front, a Marxist-Leninist party, who is running for the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition.
Fonseka expects that the debates will heat up as soon as the election manifestos are published. But there are reasons why the parties are holding back.
From Crisis to Popular Uprising
In 2019, Sri Lanka experienced the worst economic crisis since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. With the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine triggering a huge slump in the key tourism sector, and the price of crude oil rising — combined with major economic policy missteps (such as the rushed conversion to organic farming in the agricultural sector) — the cost of food, fuel, and medicines soared. For most people, this crisis rendered normal life impossible. In 2022, the government was finally forced to stop paying interest and making repayments on the national debt, tantamount to declaring national bankruptcy.
The result of all of this was the Aragalaya popular uprising. After weeks of mass protests, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned in May 2022, and his entire government followed suit shortly thereafter. Protesters were not deterred by the fact that security forces were ordered to shoot at them: in July 2022, they stormed the presidential palace in Colombo, forcing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down. “It was a genuine people’s movement made up of citizens from every social class”, says Balasingham Skanthakumar from the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka.
The number of people living below the poverty line more than doubled between 2017 and 2023.
Since then, the economy has only stabilized at the macro level. “Economic growth is now at about 2 percent, inflation has subsided, but still all indicators are far below pre-crisis levels”, he explains. Yet despite the current government lauding this as a sign of recovery, it has hardly any impact on most people’s lives. “Food prices are still too high, wages are too low, and public services, especially schools and hospitals, are on the verge of collapse.”
The number of people living below the poverty line more than doubled between 2017 and 2023, from 11.3 percent to 25.9 percent. In 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had agreed on a 3-billion-dollar emergency aid programme with Sri Lanka. A group of 17 lender states and the People’s Republic of China pledged additional aid and substantial debt relief — but not without provisos. The World Bank cautioned in its “Bridge to Recovery” report from April 2024 that the “narrow path” to restoring growth and prosperity will depend on successful debt restructuring, providing adequate support to the poorest and most vulnerable, and avoiding reversals of reforms following the upcoming elections.
Skanthakumar is critical of the fact that cuts are primarily being made where “the elites are unaffected, namely in education and in healthcare”. The military budget, on the other hand, has been left untouched, with 60 percent of government spending still being allocated to the army. “The government has not yet taken the necessary steps to alleviate people’s problems. Although some people are receiving monetary aid, this is too little, and it reaches too few.”
However, challenging the unpopular IMF measures is notoriously difficult. It’s no wonder that the parties are reluctant to go out on a limb and make concrete proposals. Instead, the government has repeatedly tried to postpone the election date. Due to persistent economic woes, they even wanted to extend President Wickremesinghe’s term in office by two years. The Supreme Court eventually put a halt to these attempts.
It is generally accepted that the president plans to continue working with the IMF. “Wickremesinghe is banking on the feel-good factor among the middle class”, says Skanthakumar. However, it remains to be seen whether this will suffice to win the election. After all, the population still harbours a great deal of pent-up discontent.
A Man of the Establishment
The then-opposition leader Wickremesinghe was initially appointed prime minister by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the wake of the popular uprising in 2022 and was promoted to interim president after Rajapaksa fled the country. The country’s constitution stipulates that parliamentary elections must take place in such a scenario, with the ensuing vote confirming Wickremesinghe’s appointment to the presidency.
The upcoming presidential election marks a return to the country’s conventional constitutional practice, in which the head of state is directly elected by the people every five years and has similar powers to, for example, the French president. The next parliamentary election is not scheduled until 2025; it is however not unlikely that, following the election, the new president will exercise his right to dissolve parliament early and will call a new election so as to be able to work with a prime minister with whom he is more closely aligned.
Premadasa is just ‘Wickremesinghe-light’.
“Many believe that Wickremesinghe owes his rise to the Rajapaksa family, who are responsible for the whole crisis”, says Skanthakumar. Indeed, the Rajapaksas are still a powerful force in Sri Lanka’s dynastic political system, although neither former President Gotabaya nor his brother, former President Mahinda (2005–2015), are running for election. Instead, the family has unexpectedly chosen to send the young Namal Rajapaksa (38) into the race, who is running for Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), a party founded by his uncle. Although it is thought he does not stand a chance of winning, his candidacy is a clear indication that the family has not given up on its political ambitions.
An officer who served as defence secretary during the presidency of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya once led a successful military operation against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a paramilitary separatist movement representing the Tamil minority. The extremely brutal fighting put an end to the decades-long civil war in 2009 with a victory for the Sri Lankan army. However, the brothers, as well as the LTTE, are accused of massive human rights violations and war crimes, events which continue to prove traumatic for the country. Nevertheless, many in the majority Sinhalese population regard the brothers as heroes.
Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa is currently considered to have a slightly better chance of victory than Wickremesinghe. After all, he has called for changes to the terms of the IMF package. However, critics accuse him of pursuing similar neoliberal policies to the President. His SJB party split from Wickremesinghe’s UNP in 2019. Skanthakumar is cynical: “Premadasa is just ‘Wickremesinghe-light’”. In other words, no significant changes can be expected from him.
Carrying the Hopes of the Left
The sole candidate who is expected to challenge the existing regime is Anura Kumara Dissanayake (also known as AKD) from the socialist People’s Liberation Front (JVP). Considering his working-class background and the fact that he grew up in a village, Dissanayake’s ascent and political transformation have proved remarkable. His victory would represent a decisive break with the established elites and the country’s political system which they control. In light of the widespread discontent amongst the population, conditions may be ripe for his victory.
However, Dissanayake is still held responsible for his party’s political past. The JVP instigated a coup in 1971 in which thousands of people lost their lives. A popular uprising launched by the party in 1987 was violently suppressed by the government two years later. The party has since abandoned armed struggle. In the NPP, a coalition comprising 28 progressive parties, trade unions, and social movements, “AKD” has become a symbolic figure in the fight against corruption and nepotism.
Only once the election manifestos have been published will it become clear just how left-wing the NPP’s policies really are — and whether voters will then trust the party to bring about real change.
However, the left-wing coalition’s programme is still vague. This suggests that the NPP does not want the specifics of socialist demands to spoil its chances of winning the elections.
While some critics accuse the NPP of populism, others point out that the coalition under Dissanayake has a long-standing record of taking pragmatic action on foreign policy. In February, AKD for the first time met with India’s Hindu nationalist foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. This meeting marked a clear break with the JVP’s anti-Indian past, in which the party, during its revolutionary phase, had oriented itself towards China. Today, Dissanayake emphasizes a non-alignment strategy for Sri Lanka, which seeks to maintain positive relations with both of Asia’s major powers. The visit to New Delhi was preceded by a visit to Beijing. The two visits go to show that the NPP has come to be recognized internationally as a Sri Lankan political force to be reckoned with.
According to Balasingham Skanthakumar, the reason that “the Left has stopped basing its arguments in political theory” is because it has never previously been able to win more than a handful of seats. However, only once the election manifestos have been published will it become clear just how left-wing the NPP’s policies really are — and whether voters will then trust the party to bring about real change.
This article first appeared in nd.Aktuell in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Hunter Bolin and Rowan Coupland for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
Britta Petersen directs the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s South Asia Office in New Delhi.