The End Game
The end game
One year into its rule, Neville de Silva reflects on how Sri Lanka’s leftist government is finding that winning elections differs vastly from running a country
One year ago, on September 21st, a comparatively little-known politician did what many of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people did not expect him to do: without winning a majority of the vote, he won the country’s presidential election, having risen from virtually nowhere.
Leading his loosely-knit alliance of largely Marxist/socialist-leaning followers called National People’s Power (NPP) into the parliamentary election, where he had faced a battering before, he did what no other political party had been able to achieve in democratic elections during Sri Lanka’s 75 years of independence.
It was only natural that the new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, should cash in on this unexpected presidential victory to take the next step in his political journey. In November that year, Dissanayake led his Marxist-leaning party to an unprecedented victory, winning 159 of the seats in the 225-member legislature as it swept away far more established parties and veteran politicians
The leftist NPP might never have reached the zenith of power had it not been for the governmental mess that followed the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks by Islamic radicals. They blew up Catholic churches and luxury hotels in the capital Colombo, in seaside Batticaloa and elsewhere, killing some 270 people, including children and tourists.
While the government was in disarray following these terrorist attacks, it was natural for people who had been living with conflict for nearly 30 years – the military defeat in May 2009 of the minority Tamil separatist LTTE came at the end of a near 30-year war – to fear a repeat of terrorist violence by another minority ethnic group.
With the date set for presidential elections as November 2019, six months after the Easter massacre, there was much relief among the majority Sinhala Buddhists, especially, when Gotabaya Rajapaksa, younger brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had jointly led the war effort against the former Tamil LTTE, announced his intention to contest.
Gotabaya’s military history, his vow to crush ethnic and religious violence and bring peace to the country, brought some solace to the Sinhala majority.
When the elections were held, Gotabaya Rajapaksa garnered over 52% of the vote, whereas Anura Kumara Dissanayake – also an unexpected party candidate – lagged way behind with a mere 3.2%. When parliamentary elections were held in August 2020, the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka People’s Freedom Alliance won a massive 140- odd seats victory.
Politicians and activists looked at the NPP derisively, mocking the ‘3%’ party
Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s NPP won a paltry three seats in the 225-seat legislature. Those two successive votes placed the NPP in the dog-house, as far as the people’s perception of a future post-Easter Sunday Sri Lanka went. Little wonder, then, that politicians and political activists looked at the NPP derisively, mocking the ‘3%’ party.
But the shock was still to come. Shortly after Gotabaya Rajapaksa assumed the presidency, Sri Lanka was struck by the Covid pandemic. For a country already suffering from the after-effects of the Easter Sunday jihadist attack, it was a catastrophe.
But the government, manoeuvrist in many ways and lacking experienced administrators, continued to fumble, to the point of making supine assessments even on such matters as agricultural development, instructing President Gotabaya on fertiliser use.
Antipathy for the then government mounted as thousands of ordinary people were pushed to the poverty line. Rising prices and fast depleting essential goods and domestic commodities hurt everyone, particularly the working class.
AKD has come to understand the difficulty of adhering to pledges made on the campaign trail
So Sri Lanka was caught in a cleft stick, with Covid on the one hand and a fast-collapsing economy on the other. A struggling population could do little but turn on an inexperienced administration, demanding its resignation before protestors sacked the presidents’ secretariat and official house, among others.
For a Leftist party such as the NPP, raising its slogans as in former years and pushing its front-line members to the fore, the situation was ideal.
Eventually President Gotabaya fled the country secretly, but not before desperately looking for a temporary president to mind the store while his brothers, Prime Minister Mahinda and Finance Minister Basil, went into hiding in a naval base.
He found a veteran politician to run the country as interim president after parliament voted for him, as the constitution permits, since other leaders were reluctant to accept the role in such desperate conditions. Gotabaya managed to persuade Ranil Wickremesinghe to accept the temporary presidency – a political enemy of the Rajapaksas, and a man who had been six times prime minister, several times a minister, and who had been voted out of parliament but was now needed.
When the time came, it was the perfect situation for the NPP, given that Wickremesinghe was a rightist pro-Western leader and a sworn political enemy of the leftist NPP.
This was the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that a fully leftist government had run the country.
But winning elections and running a country are two different things. In pro-election campaigns, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, made promises that worried even some of his supporters.
Perhaps the AKD-led party thought it would not be called on to fulfil them. Yet as soon as the government was formed, the people, especially NPP supporters, began in earnest to demand that the government keep its promises.
It is only now, when weighed down by governance, that AKD has come to understand the difficulty of adhering to pledges made on the campaign trail.
For instance: his vow not to honour commitments made by Ranil Wickremesinghe to the IMF, in exchange for financial assistance to help Sri Lanka through its economic crisis, especially loan repayments.
While campaigning, AKD said he would not negotiate with Western institutions like the IMF. But slowly, such promises changed and today the country is very much dependent on the IMF and other international institutions for rescue proposals.
Now, those glitzy promises made to win over supporters are slowly losing their glamour as hard times face the NPP and Donald Trump’s tariffs begin to bite.
It would not be surprising if, over the next couple of years, there are perceptible shifts in Sri Lankan foreign policy, with the once Marxist-oriented NPP losing its leftist ardour and beginning to embrace Trump – if he is still around and blowing his trumpet over how he will start running the world.
We have already seen that a generally pro-Chinese party that once paid obeisance to China has already begun to change its stance, to adopt Indian Prime Minister Modi’s offers to tie Sri Lanka closer to Bharat, as India is called, while loosening its reliance on and friendship with China.
But what is rather worrying is where Sri Lankan foreign policy is heading regarding its long-standing diplomatic support for Palestine and the Palestinian people. As one of the founder members of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) dating back to the first Summit of 1961 in Belgrade under President Josip Tito, Sri Lanka has stood by Palestine and its people. But it seems the NPP government is weakening its commitment to the Palestinian cause, possibly pressured by Trump and the US, as we see signs of foreign policy shifts.
For a Leftist political party that twice launched insurrections against the Sri Lanka government in 1971 and 1987, the NPP’s path is bound to be interesting.
The NPP consists mainly of the Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which led the 1971 armed attack against the government and now plays a lead role in the NPP. There are signs of differences rising between the two parties, although they seem contained at the moment.
How these frictions – including the tougher line that the JVP wishes to pursue – will be settled could determine how the NPP steers both foreign and domestic policy without sacrificing the country’s long- standing policies that previous administrations followed.
Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for the foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s Deputy High Commissioner in London
News has just come in that a member of the independent Election Commission, Ms PMS Charles, has resigned. The reason for her resignation is not known but speculation in Colombo is that she was pressured to quit in further moves to scupper the election. It is also being said that one or more of the surviving three members will also resign as pressure mounts. This could happen by independence day