NEED TO KNOW
Tremors Welcome
SRI LANKA
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is often portrayed as a Marxist who helped organize protests that led to the ousting in 2022 of the country’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, part of the family that has long run the country.
As the Associated Press reported, after winning groundbreaking elections in late September in an upset, Dissanayake called snap parliamentary elections for Nov. 14 to help solidify the control of his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance and his political party, the People’s Liberation Front (PLF), a Marxist group that launched two failed socialist revolutions in the South Asian island country in the 1970s and 1980s.
Writers at the World Socialist Web Site disagreed about the Marxist tag, however, arguing that Dissanayake was never a leftist radical. Now 55, he came of age, for example, when the PLF supported the Sinhalese-dominated central government’s brutal campaign against now-defeated ethnic Tamil militants, ending the 25-year-long Sri Lankan civil war in 2009.
The distinction is important because Dissanayake, who overcame Sri Lanka’s traditional ruling families to win September’s election, has major decisions to make about his country’s economy and its relations abroad.
On the campaign trail, for example, Dissanayake pledged to dole out more state aid to the poor and relief to Sri Lankans suffering under the austerity policies that Sri Lanka has been obligated to enact under a $2.9 billion bailout program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These measures included higher income taxes and electricity prices that especially hammered the poor, Al Jazeera reported.
And by the way, it was the economic hardships faced by ordinary Sri Lankans, and the rampant corruption in the country, that led to the 2022 street protests that led to the Rajapaksa family’s downfall.
Now, as GIS Reports explained, Dissanayake must implement IMF austerity commitments while also making good on his promises to improve the economy and public services.
The president has called on easing the tax burden for the poorest Sri Lankans, cracking down on government corruption and increasing transparency while renegotiating the IMF bailout terms, the United States Institute of Peace noted. He has also argued for allowing more direct foreign investment into the country to grow jobs.
And in the first month of office, the average Sri Lankan is satisfied with the steps the NPP government has taken so far, which include farmers and fishermen receiving fuel and fertilizer subsidies and pensioners getting a modest pay rise.
Now, the president clearly hopes the NPP alliance will win a majority as a mandate for his reform-minded policies, Reuters wrote. Gaining those allies in the legislature will give him significant flexibility in answering to the IMF and his constituents while inking new trade rules.
Meanwhile, critics say he is likely to “pursue protectionist measures, including efforts to spearhead more domestic production while favoring small and medium enterprises,” added Foreign Policy, illustrating local fear of the president’s Marxist credentials. Even so, the magazine adds that despite his anti-corruption stance, “he is not a traditional populist, either: He supports free trade and assistance from international financial institutions.”
On the diplomatic front, Dissanayake is navigating Sri Lanka’s financial and political commitments to India, the US and especially China: Sri Lanka owes billions of dollars for infrastructure projects to China but defaulted in 2022. While historically he and his People’s Liberation Front have leaned toward communist China, the new president has not made many foreign overtures since he’s been in office.
After he was elected, the new president faced an uphill battle to implement the mandate he was given by voters for a fresh start, say analysts. Part of that roadblock is parliament, which is still dominated by the party of the Rajapaksa family – Dissanayake’s party only holds three seats.
So it’s no surprise, added the Diplomat, that one of his first moves after taking the helm of the country was to call elections to change that. Now it’s up to voters. And they are expected to give Dissanayake’s party a huge mandate.
After all, as Sri Lankan social scientist B. Skanthakumar noted, it’s all part and parcel of Sri Lanka’s fresh start. Because after all, “Sri Lanka is experiencing a political earthquake.”
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