Dissanayake, 55, has denied any violent past. Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna He has steered the party further toward the mainstream of Sri Lankan politics. Still, for a country where the presidency has long rotated among a handful of dynastic political families, his rise to power represents growing anger among the country’s 22 million people.
“The elite are very upset that this outsider can actually lead this country,” said Harini Amarasuriya, an MP and member of Dissanayake’s coalition. “He has been in parliament for 24 years and a political activist for about 30 years, so you can’t ignore that.”
In 2022, street protesters removed the then-president from office Gotabaya RajapaksaWhose financial mismanagement bankrupted the country and caused shortages of basic commodities like food and fuel. Parliament then Ranil Wickremesinghe leading Sri Lanka to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund, which approved a $3 billion bailout on the condition that the country put its finances in order.
Ordinary citizens have suffered the brunt of this in the form of higher taxes and electricity bills. On Sunday, they tried to ease this pain to some extent by voting for leftist leader Dissanayake, who is a political outsider.
Dissanayake does not want to tear up the IMF deal – a sign of how much his party has changed since the days of the rebellion. But he does want to renegotiate some loan terms to ease the burden on the poor. It is also unclear whether Dissanayake will abide by an agreement reached between the previous administration and bondholders to restructure about $12.6 billion worth of bonds.
This uncertainty has weighed on investor sentiment. Sri Lanka’s dollar bonds due in 2027 and 2029 fell the most in more than 2 years on Monday, the first day of trading after Saturday’s election. The rupee rose to 303.85 against the dollar, with investors hoping the new leader will stick with the IMF program, which also boosted stocks.
During his inaugural address in Colombo on Monday, Dissanayake acknowledged that Sri Lanka “needs international support.”
“Whatever the division of powers, we expect to work in the most beneficial way,” he said. “We must not become an isolated country. We must move forward in the world with unity and cooperation.”
known by the first letter of their name acreDissanayake has a greater popular mandate than any Sri Lankan leader in recent years. He emerged as a flagbearer for the demands of the 2022 protest movement during the campaign, successfully capitalising on a wave of discontent by vowing to root out corruption and lead with good governance.
Although his party is communist in ideology, and its website features a hammer and sickle logo, Dissanayake has indicated he will seek to balance relations between the major powers – the region’s biggest strategic rival, India, and China, which are both major investors in Sri Lanka. In his manifesto, he promised to re-examine international trade agreements to boost exports, and his supporters have called for greater scrutiny of investment deals with China and other countries to avoid future debt traps.
In a high-profile visit to India in February, Dissanayake held meetings with both Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Two months later, a delegation from the Chinese Communist Party visited Dissanayake’s office to discuss politics.
“When you look at his history, his stance has been more nationalistic — not pro-China or pro-India,” said Shaun Barman, a researcher and sessional lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology who specializes in Sri Lankan foreign policy.
“One might assume that since they are historically a Marxist-Leninist party, they would be closely aligned with China because of their ideological similarities, but they have come a long way from being that,” he said. “In this election, they presented themselves as a center-left party.”
A key foreign policy test could be whether Dissanayake follows through on a previous government decision to ban foreign research vessels from visiting its waters. Sri Lanka imposed the ban earlier this year after the United States and India complained about visits by Chinese research vessels, but later said it would lift the ban because it did not want to unfairly punish China.
Dissanayake’s victory underscores the extent to which Sri Lanka’s political landscape has been upended during the crisis years. As in this election, Dissanayake contested the 2019 presidential election by attacking the country’s political system, telling a local journalist that the two main contenders were actually “the same camp that is responsible for the socio-economic malaise that has gripped the country for the past 71 years in the post-independence era.”
“This camp has done the most disgusting things in politics,” he said. “We joined this fight to represent the other political camp.” His candidacy that year garnered just 3% of the vote. This year he defeated his second-place opponent by more than 1.2 million votes.
Dissanayake was active in student politics with the JVP during the 1987-89 uprising against the government, which was brutally suppressed by Sri Lankan paramilitary forces. He became the party’s leader in 2014 and has since engaged civil society leaders and academics to attract a wider cross-section of society.
The party has also moved away from its anti-capitalist roots and has joined coalition governments for a time. Still, the JVP leadership is untested as administrators: the National People’s Power coalition it leads has only three members in the 225-seat parliament.
While Sri Lankans were unhappy with the IMF deal, the economy has shown signs of progress under Wickremesinghe’s leadership. Inflation has fallen from nearly 70% to single digits, borrowing costs have fallen, growth has picked up, and debt restructuring talks have succeeded.
Still, Dissanayake noted on Monday that he had inherited a “challenged country.” In a speech after taking office, the new president said there was a need for “a good political culture in line with the expectations of the people. We are committed to this.”
