Following the dramatic Presidential elections in September, Sri Lanka is set to elect a new Parliament in mid-November after newly-elected President Anura Dissanayake called snap elections. In this post, the last of our special posts on general elections in South Asia in 2024 (see below for blogposts on Bangladesh, Pakistan and India), Alan J. Keenan looks at the political landscape in Sri Lanka, and issues that concern the parties and the people in the upcoming elections.   

Following the 21 September election of Leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake as President, Sri Lanka approaches another round of voting on 14 November, this time to choose a new Parliament. With his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance holding only three seats in the current Parliament, Dissanayake moved quickly to call a snap general election in the hope of gaining the legislative majority he will need to push forward his agenda. Promising to crack down on corruption, bring justice to the victims of the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks and create a more just and prosperous economy, Dissanayake appealed to the millions of voters hungry for major change. Leading in opinion polls for most of 2023, his victory has jolted the Sri Lankan political establishment and opens up the possibility — but only the possibility — of significant change.

The NPP, formed ahead of the 2019 presidential election, brought together 20 Left social activist groups and trade unions around a core of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP; lit., People’s Liberation Front), the once revolutionary Marxist party that Dissanayake has led since 2014. Despite its Marxist roots, the NPP’s electoral platform is principally a liberal-progressive ‘good governance’ agenda with promises of a more just and efficient state, including through the full operation of independent oversight institutions and, ultimately, through constitutional reform to replace the presidential system of government — blamed for fostering authoritarianism and corruption — with a fully parliamentary system.

To this agenda is added a commitment to economic justice and greater equity in how the debt relief and reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2023 are implemented but without any clear ideological or practical program to achieve it. While Dissanayake has used the NPP to move away from the JVP’s strongly Sinhala nationalist past and in the direction of more accommodating and pluralist positions on ethnic issues, the balance of power within the NPP is clearly held by the JVP. Crucial here will be how much influence over policy can be won by the more liberal, progressive strands of the NPP — best represented by Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, a feminist academic who has helped build the NPP’s pathbreaking women’s movement.

The parliamentary vote will help determine Dissanayake’s chances of success and the NPP’s chances of consolidating their previously implausible status as the country’s premier party. Can it win a majority, as many observers expect? Could it even win the two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution, as some in the opposition fear?

Dissanayake’s victory — jumping from the 3 per cent vote share in 2019 to 42 per cent this year — and the very real possibility of an NPP majority in Parliament is a product of three inter-related crises: the precipitous collapse of the economy in 2022 and the mass protest movement it sparked; the public’s growing disgust with and distrust of the country’s main political parties, widely seen as corrupt and disconnected from the concerns and difficulties of most Sri Lankans; and the transformation and ultimate disintegration of Sri Lanka’s two-party system of electoral politics that had begun well before the 2022 economic crisis.

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The decay/fracturing of Sri Lanka’s longstanding two-party dominated electoral system began in 2014 when a section of the vaguely left-of-centre Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) joined with their traditional rivals in the centre-right, the United National Party (UNP) to unseat the SLFP incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa. The success of the SLFP–UNP coalition was short-lived as the bulk of the SLFP soon followed Mahinda Rajapaksa to form the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP; lit., Sri Lanka People’s Front) which then swept to victory with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda’s brother, as its presidential candidate in 2019.

The SLPP won an overwhelming victory in the 2020 general election, crushing the UNP entirely and leaving the (UNP) splinter, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB; lit., United People’s Power), as a weak opposition. By 2022, however, the SLPP was itself in free fall, thanks to the economic collapse and resulting mass protests brought on by the disastrous policies of Gotabaya’s administration. With Gotabaya forced to resign in July 2022, the Rajapaksas and their parliamentary majority turned to UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, choosing him to complete Gotabaya’s five-year term in office. (In the recent presidential election, Wickremesinghe, running as an independent but backed by most of the SLPP’s senior politicians, was a distant third place, while Namal Rajapaksa (Mahinda’s son), running as the SLPP’s official candidate, came fourth, with less than three per cent of the vote share.)

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What faces the NPP in the upcoming general election are the disorganised and frequently re-composing fragments of this once powerful, now discredited, two-bloc system. Many of Sri Lanka’s senior politicians, especially but not only those closely associated with the Rajapaksa family, have chosen to retire or sit out this election, fearing defeat.

The NPP’s most serious challenger is the SJB, led by Sajith Premadasa, who placed second in the recent presidential vote with 32 per cent. Born of a split from the UNP, Premadasa and the SJB remain a centre-right party, promising a more fair ‘social market economy’ and an end to corruption, but failing to inspire most voters in its three national elections to date.

Next up is the New Democratic Front (NDF), an ideologically incoherent collection of former members of most of Sri Lanka’s former ruling parties: the UNP of just-defeated ex-President Wickremesinghe, the Rajapaksas’ SLPP, Premadasa’s SJB, and the SLFP.

The SLPP — absent the four senior Rajapaksa brothers but still featuring the 38-year-old Namal Rajapaksa — is a shadow of its former self when Mahinda (2005–2015) and then Gotabaya Rajapaksa (2019–22) reigned as powerful authoritarian executives. Nonetheless, it has lived to fight another day and its hardline Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, currently without much electoral traction, could yet return as an effective means of mobilising voters.

Competing for this slice of the electorate is a new arrival, the Sarvajana Balaya Alliance (SBA), headed by former Rajapaksa ally and media tycoon Dilith Jayaweera. In addition, Sri Lanka’s smaller ethnic parties – representing Muslims, Malaiyaha (formerly known as Indian or Plantation) Tamils and Tamils of the North and East — are running either on their own or as parts of alliances with the SJB, NDF and SLPP. The fragile unity that until recently held at least some of the parties representing northern and eastern Tamils is now fully shattered, with at least five parties having a chance of winning some of the Tamils’ small share of the legislature.

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With a weak and divided opposition, the NPP appears well-placed to win, especially in light of Sri Lankan voters’ tradition of giving a parliamentary majority to the party of a recently-elected President. The NPP is running many first-time and often relatively unknown candidates. This may resonate with voters galvanised by the 2022 protest movement’s demand for ‘system change’ and the replacement of the entire 225-member Parliament. Other voters will worry the NPP’s candidates are unprepared, or simply not vetted by the local networks of influence and patronage that traditionally guide voters’ choices. Many voters remain wary of the JVP, remembering the extreme violence of their insurrections in 1971 and the late 1980s.

The NPP’s policy agenda is in principle popular and could potentially find broad consensus, including with sections of the SJB and NDF. In practice, however, each item will face major challenges should the government choose to pursue them seriously:

• The government has very limited room to achieve greater equity in implementing the IMF bailout agreement without making major — and time-consuming — changes to the program as well as to the recently agreed international debt restructuring deals. To date, Dissanayake has chosen not to rock the boat and accepted the terms of the IMF deal, holding out for changes that promise only limited relief. If a future NPP government continues this approach, it risks gravely disappointing, and ultimately angering, voters looking for meaningful improvements in their living standards.

• Efforts to investigate entrenched corruption and end impunity for crimes by the politically connected — including the 2019 Easter bombings — will face major resistance from powerful forces with links to the security establishment. Evidence of this resistance the fight back can already be seen. (More generally, moving away from the inefficiencies and distortions of patronage politics, which implicate almost all arms of the state, will be a long and frustrating road at best). Will an NPP government be ready for these battles?
• Previous governments have tried to bring in a new Constitution and electoral system and have failed, in part because of vested interests attached to the current system. It is unclear whether the popular mood has shifted enough to change these dynamics.
• Sinhala Buddhist nationalism currently appears dormant as an electoral force — even as it remains entrenched in state institutions and political culture. It has at least temporarily been displaced by economic concerns and perhaps weakened by its association with the damaged Rajapaksa family brand. It is almost certain to emerge again, however, should an NPP government find the courage — and backing of the JVP — to follow through on its modest promises to respect the rights of Tamils and Muslims through a degree of devolved power and a modicum of justice and truth for war-related crimes. Would Dissanayake/NPP be willing and able to stand down Sinhala nationalist resistance?

Assuming, as most observers do, that the NPP is able to put together a working majority, the composition of the parliamentary Opposition will matter a lot. Will the Opposition actively seek to weaken and undermine the government, or will it be open to support compromises, whether on IMF reforms, on corruption, on a new Constitution and electoral laws or on addressing the legacy of the civil war?

And, from the other side of the aisle, can an NPP government — which, in order to preserve the purity of its brand, has so far refused any deals or coalitions with other parties — learn how to work with other parties to find consensus on at least some aspects of its reform program? If so, how does this fit with the at-times absolutist demands of ‘system-change’? Can the NPP navigate through this apparent contradiction? Should its plans be stymied or face strong opposition, can it avoid a regression into the intolerance of dissent that characterised the JVP during its periods of violent insurrection?

The success of any NPP government will depend, in part, on its ability to find a middle way.

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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the views of the ‘South Asia @ LSE’ blog, the LSE South Asia Centre or the London School of Economics and Political Science. Please click here for our Comments Policy.

This blogpost may not be reposted by anyone without prior written consent of LSE South Asia Centre; please e-mail southasia@lse.ac.uk for permission.

Banner image © Brian Kyed, Jami-ul Alfar Mosque, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2020, Unsplash.

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See also

David Lewis, ‘Bangladesh Goes to the Polls‘, 1 January 2024.

Tahir Kamran, ‘Pakistan Goes to the Polls‘, 29 January 2024.

Pranav Gupta, ‘India Goes to the Polls 1‘, 15 April 2024.

Vignesh Rajahmani and Raghunath Nageswaran, ‘India Goes to the Polls 2‘, 15 April 2024.