COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Marxist president-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayake hails from a party behind two deadly insurrections, counts Che Guevara among his heroes and will now helm a country limping back from economic ruin.

The 55-year-old labourer’s son took 42.31 per cent of the ballots in Saturday’s election, as voters punished establishment parties for a 2022 economic meltdown and hardships imposed by a stringent IMF bailout.

The financial crash was the worst in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka’s history as an independent nation since the end of British colonial rule in 1948. “This victory belongs to all of us… Together, we stand ready to rewrite Sri Lankan history,” Dissana­yake wrote on social media platform X after the results were announced.

The president-elect and his People’s Liberation Front (JVP) saw their popularity surge after shortages of food, fuel and medicines at the peak of the crisis fuelled anger at government corruption and economic mismanagement.

Dissanayake made a public declaration in 2014 that his party would ‘never again’ take up arms

“For the first time in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, governance will shift from the control of a few corrupt elite families to a people’s government,” he wrote in his party’s campaign manifesto.

Married and with two children, Dissanayake has spent most of his political career outside of the mainstream.

He was a student leader during a failed uprising led by the JVP in the 1980s that left tens of thousands dead. He assumed leadership of the party in 2014, according to his CV, and shortly afterwards made a public declaration it would “never again” take up arms. It won less than four percent of the vote during the most recent parliamentary elections in 2020.

Dissanayake’s pledge to change a “corrupt” political culture resonates as millions struggle to make ends meet following tax hikes and other austerity measures imposed by outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

He will be sworn in on Monday morning at the colonial-era President Secretariat in Colombo, election commission officials said.

Marx, Engels, Castro

Portraits of communist luminaries including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Fidel Castro hang in Dissanayake’s office in the capital. Outside a red hammer and sickle flag flies from a flagpole.

In 1971 the JVP launched its first insurrection, against the socialist government of Sirima Bandaranaike, the world’s first woman prime minister. The party’s combatants were known as “Che Guevaras.” The fighting was brief, but led to the deaths of 20,000 people.

Their second armed struggle was in 1987, to oppose the then-government’s plan to devolve political power to the island’s minority Tamils under a deal brokered by neighbouring India.

Dissanayake, a member of the majority Sinhalese community, was an active JVP student leader during the second insurrection, which was also coupled with a violent anti-India campaign.

He has described how one of his teachers sheltered him for over a month to save him from government-backed death squads that killed JVP activists, setting fire to their bodies in public using car tyres.

A large number of people disappeared, and unofficial estimates place the death toll from the second JVP armed struggle at about 60,000. Some are still unaccounted for.

Geopolitics tightrope

Since his rise to popularity he has softened some policies, saying he believes in an open economy and is not totally opposed to privatisation. “There is a smear campaign against us, saying we will nationalise everything, even cows,” Dissanayake said at a campaign rally.

“We will certainly help farmers to improve, to have their own dairies,” he said. “We will not take over cows.” His manifesto vows to improve loss-making state enterprises without selling them off. Dissanayake and his party have mended fences with New Delhi since their anti-India rhetoric in 1987, but he is also seen as being close to China.

The two nations are competing for influence in Sri Lanka, strategically situated on global east-west sea routes.

Dissanayake visited New Delhi this year for meetings with top Indian politicians, shortly after a similar visit to Beijing.

On Sunday JVP politburo member Bimal Ratnayake said Dissanayake would not allow the island to be caught up in geopolitical rivalry between the two.

“Sri Lankan territory will not be used against any other nation,” he said.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2024