Sri Lanka’s presidential election held last Saturday resulted in electing Anura Kumara Dissanayake as the ninth executive president of the country. He polled 5,634,915 votes as against his nearest rival Sajith Premadasa who polled 4,363,035 votes and incumbent President Ranil Wikramasinghe polled 2,299,767 votes.
Under the Sri Lankan Constitution a candidate should obtain 50% +1 votes to directly become president. In all previous elections the winning candidate had obtained that threshold mark. However, Anura Kumara was far behind that mark and the second and third preferences of the defeated candidates, other than the candidate who came second, were counted to select the President. So it’s a sort of run-off election between the first two candidates. In this second count he obtained 105,264 votes as against 167,867 votes for Sajith thus obtaining a cumulative vote of 5,740,179 (42.31%). Sajith’s total was 4,530,902 (32.76%) votes. Even after adding second preferences Anura Kumara could not muster 50% but he was declared elected as per the provisions of law. Thus Anura Kumara Dissanayaka is the first President of the country without an absolute majority of votes cast in the election
Anura Kumara, also known as AKD, is the leader of misnamed People’s Liberation Front (JVP) a pseudo-Marxist Maoist party which organised two armed insurrections in 1971 and 1988/89. However, under AKD’s leadership the JVP has shed all its socialist rhetoric and embraced capitalism covertly. To bolster its right-wing shift he went on to form the National People’s Power (NPP) as an electoral formation encompassing more and more right-wing elements mainly university academics and retired military officers.
AKD was more at ease with business and corporate elements and held several rounds of meetings and discussions with them to guarantee them that he was no longer following so-called socialist or leftist policies and industrialists and other entrepreneurs can continue as before. At one such gathering a leading businessman ushered praise on AKD as he has abandoned his Marxist policies in favour of capitalist policies and therefore he would vote for AKD and urged others to follow suit.
The pattern of votes cast for AKD reveals some stark realities. He was heavily embraced by southern Sinhalese voters who last time gave Gotabhaya Rajapaksha a thumping majority. He hoped that he could get all those Gotabhaya votes to pass the 50% threshold but failed to do so. The incumbent President Ranil cut into that vote base to some extent on the plank that he was the man who could solve the economic crisis that resulted in long ques for fuel, gas and other essentials in mid-2022. Understanding this risky situation in the south the AKD heavily campaigned in the north and east, visiting these provinces several times in order to woo minority votes. Though he had succeeded to some extent in that effort, increasing his vote base of around 1% in the north and east in 2019 to some 8% this time, he was not trusted by majority of people in these two provinces. Tamils and Muslims in the north and east and Hill Country Tamils have decisively rejected him thus depriving him of the 50% +1 vote needed to become president in the first round itself.
The JVP, the party of AKD, was instrumental in pushing the then President Mahinda Rajapaksha after 2006 to attack the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with heavy weapons and continue the war in north and east until the LTTE was defeated. This barbaric war resulted in killing more than a hundred-thousand innocent Tamils and maiming thousands more. The JVP has publicly expressed that they were instrumental in prosecuting the war and AKD has said that he will never apologise for supporting this war.
So AKD and the NPP’s chauvinistic trajectory is clear and the vast majority of Tamils in the North, East and other areas voted against AKD. Not only Tamils, Muslims in the East and other parts of the country also did not vote for him even though NPP has been able to build small support groups among Muslim community. Then again Maleiyaga Tamils living in hill country and other adjacent districts clearly rejected him and mostly voted for Sajith Premadasa. So AKD’s vote base is southern Sinhalese and all the minority communities rightly rejected his hollow advances.
A special feature of this election is the emergence of a Tamil candidate espousing Tamil nationalist demands. This came after 1982 where the first ever presidential election was held and thereafter Tamils in the north and east had voted for southern Sinhalese candidates who have promised to solve their grievances on each occasion. Nevertheless, Sinhalese candidates failed to pay any attention to their demands/grievances even when they won the presidency and there has been a dialogue going on in the political circles in the Tamil community on how to advance their demands and the outcome was naming P. Ariyanatram as the Tamil Common candidate. However there was no unanimous agreement even among Tamil political circles on Ariyanatram’s candidature.
At the election this Tamil common candidate was received with mixed results. Ariyanathram polled 226,343 votes in total and 1.7%. He failed to win any of the electoral districts and all five districts in north and east and Nuvaraeliya district, where Maleiyaga Tamils are in majority, were won by Sajith Premadasa the main opposition candidate. So even in this time, the majority of Tamils in the north and east had placed their trust on a southern Sinhalese candidate and the national question will drag on for another period without seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.
Then we have to consider what is the position of left parties in this election. Four left parties leaning on socialism were in the fray in this election. They were Socialist People’s Forum (SPF), Nawa Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), United Socialist Party (USP, the CWI in Sri Lanka) and the Socialist Equality Party. In this election the NSSP, which was led by Wikramabahu Karunarathna till his recent death, had polled 12,760 votes, leaving little known Priyantha Wikramasinghe, the NSSP candidate, with highest number of votes among the left. However much hope was put on Nuwan Bopage, candidate of the SPF to mount a challenge to AKD, as the Frontline Socialist Party, the main constituent of the misnamed People’s Struggle Alliance (PSA), was originally a breakaway group from the JVP. After a campaign comprised of much fanfare, Bopage, running under the Socialist People’s Forum (SPF) banner, was able to muster 11,191 votes only. Against this backdrop, the 8,954 votes obtained by Sirithunga Jayasuriya, the USP candidate, is a remarkable achievement as his campaign had far less resources compared with that of Bopage, which was backed by a considerable section of influential individuals in the leftist circles. Additionally Bopage, with the backing of FSP, unashamedly used the name of Aragalaya – the name given to the 2022 mass movement – for his campaign without consulting Aragalaya activists and this resulted a large number of activists distancing themselves from him.
Accordingly, the outcome of this election has serious repercussions for people and the left movement in particular. AKD has come to power with a leftist veneer though he had abandoned any claim to be left as is shown by his willingness to work within capitalism. This result clearly shows that the NPP does not command solid popular support and it might dissipate at any time, even soon. The FSP, though did not contest in its own name and put forward their member Bopage under a different party name, is the biggest loser and their claim to be the main party in the left has shattered. Votes cast for Sirithunga Jayasuriya, USP candidate shows that potential for a revolutionary left movement is still there and we have to harness it carefully but with vigour and determination.
