Sri Lanka’s new president faces many choices as he tries to balance ties between the country’s two huge partners: India and China.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the leader of a coalition headed by a Marxist political party. The same party unsuccessfully launched rebellions in the 1970s and 1980s.
Marxism is a set of political beliefs linked to Karl Marx, one of the writers of the Communist Manifesto.
Dissanayake is the leader of the National People’s Power alliance. His party is the People’s Liberation Front, which is known as the JVP.
Parliamentary politics
Dissanayake entered public politics in 1993. He aimed to rebuild the JVP party after the failed rebellions of earlier years. The party gained its first seat in Parliament in 1994.
In 1997, he became an organizer of the Socialist Students’ Union and joined the Central Committee of the JVP. One year later, he joined the party’s politburo.
Dissanayake was first elected to Parliament in 2000. At the time, the party entered an alliance with President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Dissanayake served for a short time as agriculture and irrigation minister.
Later, the JVP supported President Mahinda Rajapaksa to defeat the Tamil Tiger rebel group. The ethnic minority separatist group carried out a civil war that lasted 26 years. The Tamil Tigers were finally crushed in 2009.
By 2014, the JVP elected Dissanayake as its leader.
A new coalition
The new JVP leader realized that his party alone could never gain enough support to rule. So in 2019, he formed an alliance of parties called the NPP. It brought together 21 groups including political parties, youth groups, women’s groups, trade unions and other civil society groups.
Since the formation of the coalition, Dissanayake has moved away from publicly supporting traditional socialist ideas such as banning private property and one-party rule. Although he is head of a Marxist party, he says he supports a free market economy. He ran for president of the NPP coalition for the first time in 2019. But he lost to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country two years later because of the country’s deep financial crisis.
Promises to end economic controls and corruption
Dissanayake enters office with promises to raise the standard of living and to clean up government corruption. He promised that politicians and officials would be held responsible for their actions. He also said he would end privileges for politicians and former presidents.
His supporters expect him to ease austerity measures put in place so the country could receive loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Last year, Sri Lanka reached a deal with the IMF for a $3 billion loan because it could not pay its foreign debts. Dissanayake has promised to continue that deal. He also said he will support local businesses instead of depending only on foreign investors.
But for the country’s Tamil minority, the future is not hopeful. Dissanayake has rejected giving more power to the northern and eastern areas where most Tamils live. He has also rejected investigating incidents during the civil war that United Nations investigators have described as possible war crimes. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the final months before the Tamil Tiger rebels’ defeat.
I’m Mario Ritter, Jr..
Bharatha Mallawarachi reported this story for the Associated Press. Mario Ritter, Jr. adapted it for VOA Learning English.
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Words in This Story
politburo –n. the most powerful committee of a communist party
standard of living –n. a level of material wealth available to individuals and families in a nation usually linked with quality of life
privilege –n. something that one person is permitted to do while others cannot
austerity –n. a condition where no big or very unnecessary spending takes place and where people accept less in the present in the hope that they are making financial progress