When Parliament elected Ranil Wickremesinghe as President two years ago, it was said that he was the ultimate beneficiary of the unprecedented people’s uprising in Sri Lanka called Aragalaya. But last week’s Presidential election showed who the real beneficiary was.
Just as the Sri Lanka Freedom Party ( SLFP ) founder-leader the Late S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike won the general elections and came to power, three years after the famous 1953 August Hartal (strike), National People’s Power (NPP ) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected as the ninth Executive President of Sri Lanka after the Aragalaya.
But there are significant differences between the two historic events. Bandaranaike did not support the Hartal but only exploited the resulting political developments to his advantage. The Left leaders who spearheaded the Hartal could not do so. Stunned by the success of that struggle, they were unable to formulate an effective strategy for the next move.
Though Dissanayake did not give leadership to the Aragalaya, he and his NPP gave full support to it. He has become the President today as a result of the change in the political landscape of the country. The old Left leaders could never come to power on their own.
Dissanayake’s victory in marks the first time in Sri Lanka’s political history that a left-wing politician has become the leader of the country. His victory has seen the transition of political power from the traditional political elite, who have been enjoyed a monopoly on power for more than seven decades as if it is their birth right, to someone with a modest family background.
While commenting on the presidential election results, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga attributed the rise of Dissanayake, son of a humble rural family to the highest political office in the country to her father Bandaranaike’s 1956 ‘ revolution’ without saying anything about the people’s rejection of dynastic politics.
In the words of Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda, one of Sri Lanka’s leading political scientists, the swearing – in of Anura Kumara Dissanayake as Sri Lanka’s President on September 23, symbolises a dramatic shift in the class base of political power — from a privileged minority of Colombo- centric , Westernised elites to a broad coalition of non-elite social forces. The class monopoly of political power institutionalised through democracy has been ruptured by demos themselves.
It is said that a Marxist has come to power for the first time in Sri Lanka. But President Dissanayake cannot be seen as a Marxist in the traditional sense. Since becoming, the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuma ( JVP), the flagship party of the NPP, ten years ago, he has been leading the party in a very different way from the previous policies and strategies. It is mainly because of his new approach that the NPP has been able to become a popular political force.
Sri Lanka is the second country in South Asia after Nepal to elect a left-wing leader as its head of the government. Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda first became prime minister in 2008 after leading a Maoist-communist decade-old armed uprising that ended the monarchy in Nepal, previously known as the world’s only Hindu kingdom. In the past 18 years, he became the prime minister three times.
Political observers say that it remains to be seen whether Sri Lanka follows Nepal, where the Left is no longer discernible from any other liberal bourgeois party.
The NPP under Dissanayake has already begun to break away from the leftist trend to a large extent. It has gone to the extent of promising to continue the economic re-structuring programme started by outgoing President under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and inviting foreign investments.
Dissanayake, while responding to the campaign launched by the opposition based on the JVP’s past, has said that although they have not abandoned their basic principles, there have been major changes in political strategies to suit the current international situation. He also explained that these changes were inevitable because there was no socialist camp in the world today.
The President’s promise to clean up public life was well received among the people who realized that the misrule of the traditional political forces was the cause of the many miseries they were facing, including the economic crisis.
His anti-corruption message and promise to usher in a new political culture inspired young voters yearning for a system change. The election results showed people’s desire to hand over political power to someone outside the traditional political establishment. People looked to Dissanayaka as a ‘candidate for change’.
People realised that the existing political forces facilitated the economic crisis, and the outright rejection of Ranil Wickremasinghe are testimony to the same. The votes Wickremasinghe got were essentially from a tiny section which experienced stability and could create a false discourse of stability for the nation.
Wickremesinghe’s complete reliance on his economic restructuring measures to win the popular vote was the biggest flaw in his electoral strategy. Though having long political experience and rich knowledge, he was unable to grasp the reality that amidst the enormous hardships facing the country in recent times, people were not going to vote only with the economic factor in mind.
One wonders whether he conveniently thought that people are so desperate to wriggle out of the economic misery that they would forget the misrule, family-dominated politics, abuse of power, breakdown of the rule of law and never-ending corruption of the traditional leaders?
It was a big mistake for Wickremesinghe to believe that he could rely on politicians from the Rajapaksa’s party and other parties to form an alliance and contest as an independent candidate when his United National Party (UNP ) did not have a significant vote bank.
As before, the minority communities also did not come forward to support him this time.
The Samagi Bala Janawegaya ( SJB ) leader Sajith Premadasa was viewed by most people as part of the traditional political elite. This is his second defeat in a Presidential election. But Premadasa may have been somewhat satisfied with defeating Wickramasinghe, even if he lost to Dissanayake.
Even President Dissanayake could not get fifty percent of the votes. Therefore, it is imperative for him to understand the nature of the mandate he has received and think of corrective measures.
No one should think simply that the election of Dissanayake and the NPP’s eclipsing the three main mainstream political parties is the end of the latter’s life. Therefore, the President faces insurmountable challenges.
He has announced the date for parliamentary elections less than two months after dissolving Parliament. This is to give no time to other parties to recover from the defeat in the Presidential election.
Dissanayake will ask the people who elected him as President to give his NPP a big victory in the parliamentary elections also to stabilize the economy and fulfil his promises. An important question is whether the results of the parliamentary elections will be based on the way the people voted in the Presidential election or whether the people will elect the NPP with a larger majority of seats to give him the full strength to steer the nation.
Be that as it may, it is necessary to consider the geographical order of the way people voted in the presidential election.
Dissanayake has been elected as President with majority support from South Sri Lanka, especially from the regions where the Sinhalese Buddhist community is dominant. On the contrary, in the predominantly Tamil speaking northern and eastern provinces and in the Hill Country people have voted in large numbers for Premadasa and Wickramasinghe.
It cannot be said that the minority communities rejected Dissanayake but it was the votes of the majority community that made him win. Dissanayake will never say that the Sinhalese people elected him as President like Gotabaya Rajapaksa did. There is a difference between the reason Gotabaya was elected by Sinhalese votes and the reason Dissanayake was elected by them.
At the same time, it is true that significant sections of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist forces have identified and supported Dissanayake as a political leader they can trust. But only time will tell whether Dissanayake will courageously resist the pressures of those nationalist forces that are against the legitimate political aspirations of the minority communities whenever he tries to find a solution to the ethnic imbroglio. Minority communities are expecting a new approach from the President regarding their issues.
The election results should not be interpreted as an expression of the people of the North and East not wanting change. Nor can they be accused of voting on ethnic grounds. Even though a so-called Tamil common candidate contested, the Tamil people overwhelmingly voted for two of the main candidates.
The question among the Tamil people is how much their aspirations will be respected within the change that the Sinhalese people want.
Finally, the historic significance of the election of a ‘comrade’ from outside a class that has hitherto monopolized political power in Sri Lanka through democratic means must be properly understood.
Sufficient time and space should be given to him to stabilize his administration and prepare to make good on his promises.