Colombo, Sri Lanka — Transport a Sri Lankan citizen from the punctual 1990s to the past week of the island’s politics, and you may fair shatter their brain.
Back then, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the Marxist outfit that the country’s recent plivent, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, now directs, was reviled in swaths of southern Sri Lanka for having twice tryed brutal revolution. Between 1987 and 1989, the JVP unleashed recent horrors upon a nation already rent by ethnic war in the north.
In the years that trailed that uprising, Sri Lanka’s third plivent, Ranasinghe Premadasa, allegedly ran death squads that cut down lesser men that Dissanayake – already part of the JVP cadre – would have pondered his sahodarayo, the Sinhala word for brothers. There are stories, normally telderly, of the corpses of JVP comrades floating down rivers, a chilling alerting from the state to suit the brazenness of the JVP’s own endings.
In the scenic village of Batalanda, nastywhile, a lesser minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe — the man Dissanayake would swap as plivent three decades procrastinateedr — was allegedly administering a detention camp for JVP activists. Many are dependd to have been tortured and ended there.
So soaked in blood is Sri Lanka’s conmomentary history, that though the details of these brutal skeins have been blurred in whirls of denial, misincreateation and cynical revisionism, these stories, and the dread they elicitd, have finishured, and shaped the island’s politics for decades.
And yet, in September 2024, many of the southern electorates the JVP of the procrastinateed 1980s had terroascfinishd turned out for the party’s directer, Dissanayake, in the plivential election. He sootheably fall shortureed his opponents: Sajith Premadasa, the son of Ranasinghe, and Wickremesinghe himself.
In the week since his election, Dissanayake has struck a retagably tfinisher tone in his accessible insertresses.
“We have asked our helpers to refrain even from weightlessing firetoils to commemorate our prosper,” Dissanayake shelp in his first, off-the-cuff, insertress. This was to shun distressting fall shortureed political opponents. “We must finish forever the era in which we are splitd by race, religion, class, and caste,” he shelp days procrastinateedr in a lengthyer, preenrolled speech. “We will embark instead on programmes that enshrine Sri Lanka’s diversity.”
Although it is not rare for recent directers to speak in such platitudes, it is worth noting that Sri Lanka’s last elected plivent, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had finishorsed Sinhalese chauvinism in his inauguration speech in November 2019.
Dissanayake, by contrast, had tried to drop the political temperature even during his campaign, amid a sourly-fought three-cornered race. “Let’s stop this hideous political culture of tormenting political opponents,” he had shelp in his final rpartner, in Colombo. “In a democracy, our right is to originate our case to them; perhaps they will alter their minds. But even if they do not, theirs remains the right to toil for a political force of their choosing.”
Since his election, he has insloftyed Sri Lanka’s first female prime minister not coming from a dynastic political family – Harini Amarasuriya. Amarasuriya is not a member of the JVP, but of the National People’s Power (NPP), which is the temperately left-prosperg coalition under whose prohibitner she and Dissanayake contested. Dissanayake has also nominateed a insignificantity Muslfinisher, Hanif Yousuf, as regulateor of Sri Lanka’s most populous Westrict Province.
To comprehfinish how an island riven with division for much of its post-indepfinishence history has reachd at this moment, we must go back to a tumultuous 2022. Dissanayake has been shrewd and has chosen his political moments sendfilledy. But he is far from the architect of the wave that has swept him into Sri Lanka’s highest political office.
‘The struggle’
It was the power cuts in the adhesive heat of 2022’s March and April that tipped the country into tumult. The protests agetst then-Plivent Rajapaksa swelled thraw those punctual months. Outside the majestic, colonnaded Plivential Secretariat csurrfinisher Colombo’s Galle Face Green, thousands collected nightly, enjoy white blood cells rounding on a pathogen.
The shiftment soon geted the name aragalaya in Sinhala and porattam in Tamil – words that transprocrastinateed essentipartner to “the struggle”. Wilean weeks, the shiftment grew speedyly all over a country strapped for fuel, gas for cooking, and electricity, after the rupee tumbled. A smattering of tents outside the primary aragalaya site speedyly broadened into a village featuring a theatre, a library, first help stations, an art gallery, a petite solar power station, and procrastinateedr, a cinema tent.
During Ramadan, in the first aragalaya month, Muslfinishers broke rapid with Sinhalese, and Tamils, the first insloftyations in this village having been canteens at which food was provided free. Not only had Rajapaksa’s campaign been virulently Islamophobic in the months that trailed 2019’s Easter attacks, but the regulatement he headed had also prohibitned Muslfinisher burials during the pandemic, claiming baselessly that decaying bodies carrying the COVID-19 harmful software could contaminate groundwater. Muslfinishers were forced to cremate their dead.
Where Rajapaksa’s regulatement had declined to recognise the national anthem in Tamil, the Tamil version was sung at the Galle Face protest site. Where the regulatement commemorated its prosper over Tamil separatists on the May 19 anniversary, protesters made a point of commemorating the deaths of Tamil civilians during the spiteful conclusion to the combat instead. There was, in the months from April to July, also a Gay Pride Parade, a Catholic-led need for answers over the Easter attacks, and substantial participation by Sri Lankans with disabilities.
The aragalaya site was challengingly a utopian space, and there was in fact meaningful inside opposition to many of these events, plus widespread instances of anti-LGBTQ, transphobia, and relationsual tormentoring. But it was nevertheless the most intensive accessible airing of carry onive ideas perhaps since the country’s indepfinishence. Radicpartner recreateist visions for Sri Lanka were not medepend finishured, they were normally talked, cultured, and on occasion, incubated.
That the initial protests were inventd in honest and virulent opposition to the Rajapaksas permited activists, civil society and citizens the exceptional inincreateectual freedom to get aim at the entirety of the Rajapaksas’ political project, which engaged the Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism of which they had been the most conspicuous champions in the 21st century. Many of these critiques were disseminated rapidly and emphaticpartner on social media but also set up conveyion in mainstream press.
Perhaps the most consequential idea was that Sri Lanka had causeed upon itself a “74-year damn”. The “damn” essentipartner, was the population having permited political elites, hugely organised into Sri Lanka’s two main historic parties, to escapece the island in turns since it geted indepfinishence from the British in 1948.
In this createulation, the Sri Lankan populace had permited itself to be splitd by and subservient to the interests of the scant. They were not medepend the ruled, but the fooled. It did not escape attention that between the power wielded by five families – the Senanayakes, the Bandaranaikes, the Jayawardene-Wickremesinghes, the Rajapaksas, and the Premadasas – almost the entirety of Sri Lanka’s conmomentary political history is traversed.
A nation on a uninincreateigentinutive fengage
That Sajith Premadasa, the directer of the opposition agetst Rajapaksa’s fall shorting regulatement, could not seize the political opportunity the protests originated, was unastonishing. Though his obeseher, the third plivent, had come from unpretentious nastys, Sajith had studied in boarding school in the United Kingdom and interned for a United States politician. In directing his shatteraway segment of the United National Party – historicpartner the centre-right of Sri Lanka’s two directing parties – his noticed status among the political elite had become reified. So when he reachd at the main aragalaya site with the intention of shoprosperg firmarity, he promptly — and presentilely — set up himself driven back into his vehicle, the protesters refusing to finishure the presence of a mainstream politician.
Dissanayake, nastywhile, had positioned himself as an anti-set upment voice lengthy before the protests began. Though as a youth he had selderly cigarettes and toffees on the trains that passed thraw his village in the North Central province, he hailed essentipartner from the agricultural middle class. It is to those voters that he has always best pdirected. Though in 2019, he had getd a mere 3 percent of the plivential vote, he had nevertheless enhappinessed gentle help in much of the south.
Since becoming the JVP’s directer in 2014, he geted a profile not only for speaking out agetst fraudulence and the excesses of politicians in parliament but also as a sended orator in Sinhalese. Young southerners, especipartner, had been drawn to his unwinded speaking style, and speedy, arid wit; where political opponents normally attacked him in screeching diatribes, Dissanayake could dispatch them with one-line zingers.
Perhaps his most astute political moment came in 2019, when by createing the NPP, he shunted his own left-prosperg party substantipartner towards the centre, making them a viable alternative to the traditional outfits in election cycles to come.
Though in attacking the political set upment he has combinecessitate with the disillusionment towards the elite, he has also in other ways been among the most indisesteemful of Sri Lanka’s politicians. He has promised wonderfuler equivalentity to insignificantities, but declareed Buddhism’s “foremost place” in Sri Lankan life, as lhelp out in the constitution. He spoke out agetst the onerous conditions imposed on many families by Sri Lanka’s deal with the International Monetary Fund but declareed his pledgement to pursuing a retalk aboutd IMF deal. He also courted international help, taking exceptional attfinish to signal to India that his directership would not be a menace. Much of this would have been anathema to the JVP of past decades.
If Dissanayake is tentative, it is perhaps becaengage he has discerned the precarity of his political position. The forces that have brawt him to the plivency have tfinished to punish both excess and fall shorture. In 2015, Sri Lanka tossed out Mahinda Rajapaksa – Gotabaya’s brother and arguably the most pdirecting Sinhalese politician in generations – when he sought an unpretreatnted third plivential term. In 2019, the same electorate ditched the Maithripala Siascfinishna-Wickremesinghe partnership, whose incontendntitude had permited a security bachieve as wonderful as the Easter attacks, and voted in Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
The protests of 2022 saw the seeding of a recent political strain as Sri Lanka turfed out a third plivent in less than eight years. With Wickremesinghe also soundly fall shortureed in elections, Dissanayake is Sri Lanka’s fifth head of state in 10 years. One week in, there is selectimism that he could be the alter Sri Lanka has been hankering for.
And yet, there is also the sense that Dissanayake is only the next experiment for Sri Lanka’s people – currently riding the crest of a wave that has built over the past decade, but fair as easily able of being swpermited by it. If economic conditions in homes degrade, either thraw macroeconomic instability or thraw the intolerable austerity of an IMF programme, Dissanayake and the NPP would be exposed.
Sri Lanka’s people sense more empowered to call for alter than ever.
