‘Need a change’: Sri Lanka’s leftist win sparks hopes, bridges old divides

Colombo, Sri Lanka – Abdul Rahuman Seyyadu Sulaiman, 56, wanted to be heard.

As Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake left the polling station at the Abeysingharama Temple in Maradana, Colombo, on Thursday, Sulaiman called out to him, urging him to stop and listen to his grievances. The police quickly accosted Sulaiman and asked him to leave the venue.

“I want [Dissanayake] to listen to the woes of my people,” Sulaiman said later. “When the former government cremated a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic, I protested it. I spoke on behalf of my religion. Justice was not served to the Muslim people.”

Sulaiman’s hope that Dissanayake will deliver justice that his predecessors did not finds echoes across Sri Lanka, which overwhelmingly voted for the centre-left leader in presidential elections in September. Now, that hope will be tested like never before.

Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) won a landslide majority in Thursday’s parliamentary election, securing 159 seats in a house of 225 members – representing a comfortable two-thirds majority. The main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), under its leader Sajith Premadasa, won just 40 seats.

Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s New Democratic Front secured five seats, and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) of the Rajapaksa family, which dominated the country’s politics for much of the past two decades, won just three seats.

The NPP’s Samanmalee Gunasinghe, who contested and won from Colombo, said: “We are happy that now we can work for the people. They have shown they need a change from the old politics.”

Vote for change

According to political analyst Aruna Kulatunga, this is the first time since 1977 – when Sri Lanka changed its parliamentary system to proportional representation – that a single party has won a clear majority. This is also the first time that the incumbent president has the numbers needed to pass legislation in parliament without needing to rely on any allies or coalition partners.

“The importance of this result, therefore, is that the Sri Lankan political fabric, fractured along racial, religious and ideological lines, has got the opportunity to unite behind a single party,” Kulatunga said, “without the horse-trading that took place in the previous coalition governments and the resultant weakening of the election pledges given.”

With a two-thirds majority, Dissanayake can now amend the constitution. The NPP has earlier promised a referendum on a new constitution.

The expectations from the NPP are high. Led by Dissanayake’s Marxist-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the NPP also includes multiple organisations, including civil society groups that came together during the 2022 protests against the government of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from power.

Vasantha Raj, 38, a daily wage earner from Dehiwala, Colombo, said he did not know the names of the NPP candidates contesting from his area but voted for the alliance – it didn’t matter who was representing it.

“We have been voting for the same people for years and nothing has changed. This time, we’ll see what these ones [the NPP] do,” Raj said.

The rise

Dissanayake, whose political fortunes rose sharply after the 2022 protests, focused in his election campaign on strengthening the country’s economy and tackling widespread corruption. At the heart of the 2022 protests was anger over the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy under the Rajapaksa family – Gotabaya’s elder brother Mahinda was prime minister.

Wickremesinghe, who took office after the Rajapaksas were forced out of power, did stabilise the economy, using loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders. But as a part of the deal with the IMF, he also introduced severe austerity measures, cut back on social security measures and raised taxes.

MF Sareena, 63, who accompanied her 83-year-old mother to a polling booth in Dematagoda, Colombo, said she too hoped the new government would fight corruption and provide relief to the poor.

“My mother is very sick. She is old and I am looking after her. We find it hard to get by every day. Food prices are high, and medicines are unaffordable. We hope things will change soon,” Sareena said.

On Friday, after all the results were announced, Nihal Abeysinghe, secretary of the National People’s Power, acknowledged the burden of hopes that the party carries. “We will ensure that we will not misuse this power just like the people who have done it in the past,” he said at a news conference.

Tamil support

Stakes are particularly high in the north of the country where the Tamil community voted for the NPP, breaking with its pattern of voting for Tamil parties. The NPP secured a majority of the seats in the north. The north and east of the country, where the Tamil population is largely based, were the epicentres of the bloodiest battles during a three-decade civil war between the Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan army. The war ended in 2009 when Sri Lankan armed forces decimated the Tamil armed leadership.

Ahilan Kadirgamar, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Jaffna, said that in the weeks leading up to the parliamentary elections, there was a clear wave of support for the NPP from the Tamil community in the north. Many Tamil voters, he said, were angry at their community’s political leaders for their failure to deliver on promises of a better deal for them.

Now, the hard work for the NPP begins, he said. To address the concerns of the people of the north and east, the Sri Lankan government must return land taken over by the military and other government departments, especially during the civil war. The government, he said, must address the worries of the country’s Tamil and Muslim minorities, frequent targets of xenophobia.

“This is not easy work,” Kadirgamar said.