Sri Lanka gives a large majority to its Marxist president

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake after his vote for the legislative elections in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2024. ISHARA S. KODIKARA / AFP Elected less than two months ago to the presidency of Sri Lanka on a breaking promise, Anura Kumara Dissanayake won an overwhelming victory in the legislative elections, Thursday, November 14. The former Marxist rallied with his coalition of left-wing parties, the National People’s Power (NPP), 61.7% of the vote. It won 159 seats out of 225, a two-thirds majority, as well as twenty-one of the twenty-two electoral districts. The opposition was totally fragmented. Its main competitor, Sajith Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya, only won 17% of the votes. The 55-year-old president will have free rein to carry out the major social, fiscal, political and institutional reforms that he promised to a population exhausted by five years of an abysmal crisis. “We believe this election will be a turning point for the country,” he said. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who had only three seats in the outgoing assembly, dissolved Parliament the day after taking office, on September 23. He chose renewal, by presenting novice candidates. Most of his opponents, veterans, including former presidents Ranil Wickremesinghe, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa, had given up on running, like nearly two-thirds of outgoing MPs. Fighting corruption The bet was not a foregone conclusion for Anura Kumara Dissanayake, elected head of the country with less than 50% of the votes cast. At the end of a short campaign, he asked voters to give him a large parliamentary majority in order to “establish a strong government that will eliminate bribery and corruption (…), change the system, clean up the Chamber and ensure that the law applies equally to everyone, including politicians.” Anura Kumara Dissanayake has championed the fight against corruption which has plagued the island of 22 million people for decades. To modify the Constitution and return to the parliamentary system before 1978, the wish of his party and a large part of the population, the head of state needed a two-thirds majority in Parliament. He achieved a spectacular breakthrough in the North, in Jaffna, an ethnic enclave of the Tamil Hindu minority where a political party from the South had never won. In this ultramilitarized region, scarred by thirty years of civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Sri Lankan army and the Sinhalese majority, Mr. Dissanayake promised to return the lands occupied by the armed forces and to build a country where all citizens feel equal, regardless of their ethnicity and religion. Sensitive subjects in this island state which has failed to promote reconciliation and remains deeply divided between its Sinhalese, Buddhist majority and its Hindu, Christian and Muslim minorities. You have 37.17% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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