TWO YEARS have passed since Sri Lanka—crippled by covid-19, excessive borrowing and a series of policy blunders—defaulted on its debts. Inflation soared, the rupee plunged in value and fuel supplies ran out. Massive protests toppled the China-friendly president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who promptly fled to the Maldives. Things are no longer quite so terrible. Leaders have tamed inflation, secured a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and reached agreement with the country’s creditors about how to restructure its debts.
Yet many Sri Lankans continue to demand fundamental change. It is not only swingeing austerity that angers them: they are also fed up with the corruption and cronyism they spy amongst the country’s elites. All this helps explain the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, an outsider from a party with Marxist and insurgent roots, in a presidential election on September 21st. He won with 42% of the vote, beating Sajith Premadasa, the son of a former president, in a second-round run-off. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the incumbent (who has been prime minister six times), had been eliminated in the first round with just 17%. The result was Sri Lanka’s biggest electoral upset since it gained independence from Britain in 1948.
Unlike most previous Sri Lankan leaders, Mr Dissanayake, also known as AKD, comes from humble roots. He is the son of a daily-wage labourer in rural Sri Lanka. He is the first president from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party (JVP), which led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s before renouncing violence. Though he has sat in parliament since 2000, his only prior experience in government is a year spent serving as the agriculture minister two decades ago. When he ran for president in 2019 he got just 3% of the vote.
This time around he hooked voters in part by promising that he would renegotiate the terms of the IMF’s bail-out, and by pledging to curb corruption and recoup money that he alleges was pilfered from the country by previous leaders (particularly Mr Rajapaksa and his brother, Mahinda, who was president from 2005 to 2015). “We will work hard to rebuild the trust that people have lost in politics,” Mr Dissanayake said in his inauguration speech. “I am not a magician; I am not a miracle-worker. There are things I know and don’t know. But I will commit myself to doing the right thing at all times, and lead a collective effort to rebuild our nation.”
Mr Dissanayake’s mandate may be clear, but his ability to deliver change is much less so. Mr Wickremesinghe has warned that attempting to renegotiate the IMF programme would delay its next tranche of lending, of around $350m, which is due in October. Others involved say there may be some scope to tweak tax rates and other parts of the government’s existing plan for meeting the IMF’s benchmarks. But such minor changes are unlikely to satisfy voters. More substantial revisions could also require renegotiation of the debt restructuring deal with Sri Lanka’s creditors, the last part of which (with bondholders) was agreed to on September 19th.
Mr Dissanayake may well struggle to combat corruption, too. This will be especially difficult if his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition does not do well in the next parliamentary election, which could be held as soon as November. Under Sri Lanka’s constitution the president appoints the prime minister, who must be a parliament member (as must all ministers). The NPP currently has just three seats in parliament. A disappointing result would force Mr Dissanayake to form a coalition government with more established parties. Their members might not share the same graft-busting zeal.
The election result could disrupt Sri Lanka’s foreign relations at a time of mounting geopolitical tension in the region. In the past the JVP has had close links to China. Until recently it was fiercely opposed to Indian influence in Sri Lanka. That is a potential worry for India, which has re-established its clout on the island in the last two years following more than a decade in which China made major inroads through military assistance and lending for ports and other infrastructure projects.
More recently the JVP has taken to advocating good relations with both of Asia’s giants. In February Mr Dissanayake visited India and met its foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In his first speech as president Mr Dissanayake said his government would “work with the world” regardless of geopolitical fractures. Both Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, sent messages congratulating the victor on his win.
Mr Dissanayake will probably try to keep Sri Lanka’s relations with China, India and America finely balanced, says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think-tank in Colombo, the capital. The new president’s immediate priority is to prove to supporters and opponents that he and his party can govern the country competently, despite having almost no experience in power. But pressure to make good on his election promises may mount swiftly–both from ordinary Sri Lankans, and from his own party’s leftist old guard. ■