Sri Lanka’s Marxist leaning president has won a sweeping mandate to fulfill his pledges to combat corruption and implement pro-poor reforms, but he faces huge challenges in a country whose economy is still fragile, analysts say.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s coalition, the National People’s Power, or NPP, party, secured an unprecedented two-thirds majority in the 225-member Parliament in snap elections held a year ahead of schedule.
The parliamentary polls — held seven weeks after he emerged victorious in presidential voting — reinforced the remarkable shift in Sri Lankan politics, where mainstream parties that led the country for decades have been reduced to the margins as people put faith in a political outsider to bring about transformative change.
Dissanayake’s coalition won 159 seats — a dramatic jump from the three seats his party held earlier. However, that commanding majority may still not be enough to steer Sri Lanka along the path he has promised.
“He is going to encounter bumps on all his agenda which is extremely ambitious. On the economy, there is no easy route to a more equitable and a faster-growing economy. In terms of good governance and anticorruption, they are going to run into a lot of vested interests in business, in politics, in the bureaucracy, in the police. It would not be easy for saints — it is not going to be easy for this government,” Alan Keenan, senior Sri Lanka consultant at the International Crisis Group said.
Dissanayake’s first task will be to ease the burden on millions from austerity measures imposed by a $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF deal brought the economy back from the brink of collapse, but the slashed subsidies and higher taxes imposed to stabilize government finances brought hardship to millions.
“They will have to provide relief to the people who have felt the tremendous rise in the cost of living. There are great expectations that this government will address that,” according to Devaka Gunawardena, research fellow at the Social Scientists Association in Colombo. “But that will require some form of renegotiation of the IMF agreement. If they continue with the deal, then they will have to think of other alternative ways of stimulating the economy. This is where the new government will have to thread the needle now.”
Dissanayake has said that he is committed to the IMF program and any changes would be undertaken in consultation with the fund. An IMF team is beginning a visit to Colombo Sunday to review the reform program.
However, the room to maneuver is limited in a country that is still mired in debt.
So far, the government has marginally reduced fuel prices and distributed subsidies to farmers and fishermen. Besides delivering such small benefits, it will be difficult to make any significant shifts or show major economic benefits to people in a country that has little money to spend, according to analysts.
Little is also known about the dynamics of the NPP — the leftist coalition that Dissanayake put together ahead of the presidential polls. It consists of his Marxist party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, professionals, trade unions, women and youth groups. Many of those elected will be first-time lawmakers new to politics.
Having to appease various interests under this “big-tent party” will be a challenge for the government, according to Rajni Gamage, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. “The NPP government will have to strike a balance between the … economic requirements of the IMF program and the more center-left oriented demands of trade unions and civil society groups who are part of the coalition,” she said.
Another litmus test he faces is meeting his promise to transform the country’s political culture — people widely blamed misgovernance and graft by previous leaders for driving Sri Lanka, once ranked as a middle-income country, into bankruptcy.
“Thank you to all who voted for a renaissance,” Dissanayake said on social media platform X on Friday after the results were announced.
For many of his voters, that renaissance involves ensuring accountability for alleged corruption and a government that is more in touch with the masses — Dissanayake is the son of a laborer, whereas past leaders came from elite political families.
According to political analysts, this is a low-hanging fruit that could yield political dividends for the new government.
“If they can make progress in either achieving accountability for big corruption cases and tracking down the assets supposedly stolen and stacked away in foreign countries, or if they can show people that they do politics differently, they are not arrogant and do not just drive around in big SUV’s with lots of security guards, that will go a long way to satisfy people, even if they don’t see their lives improve materially or economically,” according to Keenan.
However, he cautions that too may not be easy.
“Even if they say they want to change things, at the end, Dissanayake’s coalition comes from the same political culture, so it remains to be seen if they can do things differently,” he said.
