Sri Lanka is now causing a political earthquake in India's neighborhood.

Few people outside Sri Lanka had heard of Anura Kumara Dissanayake before Monday. Dissanayake’s swearing-in as president was a political earthquake. He had succeeded in doing the unthinkable. An outsider, he had brought a Marxist-Leninist party from the fringes to power in Sri Lanka.

Dissanayake is an outsider to a political milieu that the Rajapaksa family has a strong grip on. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee in July 2022 after a popular uprising. His brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was forced to resign as prime minister just two months earlier. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took power after Gotabaya’s ouster, did so with the backing of the Rajapaksa family party.

Thus, the election of Dissanayake shows that Sri Lanka is voting for a complete change from the traditional parties that have ruled it for decades.

It is worth noting that Dissanayake's Janata Vimukthi Peramuna Party (JVP) fought a bloody war with Sri Lankan forces in the 1970s and 1980s, and thousands of people were killed.

The EPLF forms part of the National People's Power Alliance headed by Dissanayake.

The armed struggle of the People's Liberation Front to seize power in Sri Lanka

The EPLF was founded on 14 May 1965 by a group of seven young men led by the charismatic Rohana Wijeweera.

Wijeweera was inspired by Stalin and traveled to the Soviet Union, but called himself Che Guevara, the hero of the Cuban Revolution.

On 5 April 1971, SLFP members launched a coordinated attack on 74 police stations across Sri Lanka, capturing 35 police stations and several major towns. However, the uprising, marred by misunderstandings and poor timing, failed after a brutal state crackdown. Reports suggest that between 8,000 and 10,000 people were killed.

The FLN faced severe repression after the failure of the armed revolution, and many of its leaders were imprisoned.

After regrouping, the EPLF launched another armed rebellion in the late 1980s. The equally violent rebellion of 1988 and 1989 was crushed, killing an estimated 7,000 people.

Rohana Wijeweera was killed on 13 November 1989 while in police custody.

How the SLFP Became a Major Party in Sri Lanka

The leadership of the EPLF then passed through several hands before Somawansa Amarasinghe took over and began rebuilding it.

In the 1990s and 2000s, under Amarasinghe's leadership, the SLFP began to transform from an armed revolutionary movement into a major political party. It faced electoral setbacks but persisted, emerging as a significant force in Sri Lankan politics by the 2000s.

Dissanayake, who succeeded Amarasinghe as leader of the TPLF in 2014, has succeeded Amarasinghe as an alternative force. He has apologised for the TPLF’s bloody past.

“A lot of things happened during the armed conflict that shouldn't have happened,” he told the BBC in 2014, apologising for the “season of horror”.

Dissanayake and the Political Earthquake in Sri Lanka

It was Amarasinghe and Dissanayake who transformed the EPLF from a left-wing extremist group into a major political party.

But it was Desayanaki who surprised everyone with his electoral victory.

In the 2019 elections, the NPP won just 3% of the vote, while the EPLF won three seats. In the latest election, the results of which were announced on Sunday, Dissanayake’s NPP won 42.3% of the vote.

In 2022, Sri Lanka witnessed popular protests that forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

“The election result clearly shows that the uprising we saw in 2022 is not over yet,” Pradeep Peiris, a professor of political science at the University of Colombo, told the Guardian.

Over the past two years, the TPLF led by Dissanayake has not only worked to soften its Marxist image but also to attract new voters with its corruption-free and transparent agenda.

Sri Lanka, which was going through its worst economic crisis in history, saw a glimmer of hope in Dissanayake. The vote was for the non-political elite, and a rejection of the established political parties that had presided over the country’s slide into chaos.

“A political earthquake in Sri Lanka,” said Erik Solheim, a former Norwegian minister and Green politician, describing Dissanayake’s win.

“This is the first time since independence that the Sri Lankan people have elected a party and a candidate from outside the traditional elite,” he said.

Dissanayake and Sri Lanka-India Relations

Erik Solheim said Dissanayake had successfully reached out to India, China and the West during his election campaign, and “everyone should feel the same way and help him become a successful leader.”

Dissanayake had visited India earlier this year and met senior officials, including External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, according to a report in the Economic Times. He was said to be interested in some of India’s projects, including the Amul dairy model.

We must bear in mind that Dissanayake is a pro-China politician.

Strategic expert Brahma Chellaney believes that his election as president poses a difficult situation for India in its immediate neighbourhood.

“A Marxist was sworn in as president of Sri Lanka. Nepal is already led by a communist. Bangladesh and Pakistan have regimes backed by the US military. The Maldives has an Islamist-leaning president. And in Myanmar, US-led military aid to the rebels has spillover effects on India,” Chellaney wrote on X.

Dissanayake thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the congratulatory message, stressing mutual cooperation.

“Thank you, Prime Minister Modi, for your kind words and support. I share your commitment to strengthening relations between our two countries. Together, we can work to enhance cooperation for the benefit of our people and the entire region,” he said.

Will Dissanayake bring Sri Lanka closer to China? It is too early to predict anything.

Reports from Colombo indicate optimism after Dissanayake was sworn in as president.

“I pledge to fulfil your responsibility to usher in a new era of renaissance in this country and look forward to your collective contribution to it,” Dissanayake said after taking the oath. Sri Lanka is likely to get a new Disha (direction). Will it be far from India? New Delhi will have to wait and watch.

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September 23, 2024

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