Nov 143 min read

Dissanyakenomics and politics

Updated: Nov 15

By: Melvin Najarian Nov. 13, 2024

The second round of Sri Lanka’s presidential election ended with the country’s first third party victory ever, as Anura Kumara Dissanayakem, a Marxist politician, won with a plurality of votes. This marks the first time in Sri Lanka’s history where no candidate won a majority of votes, as Sajith Premadasa, the opposition leader, won 32.76% of the votes, while Dissanayake received 42.31% of the votes as part of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or the People’s Liberation Front, a leftist political party and former revolutionary movement. This election arrived at a pivotal moment, as the nation was experiencing an economic crisis in the wake of mass protests in 2022 that ousted the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The recently elected president has been politically active since his youth. As a college student, Dissanayakem took part in student protests against a peace accord signed with India that aimed to offer some autonomy to the Tamil population in Sri Lanka in a bid to end the Sri Lankan Civil War. During his university years, he joined the Socialist Students Union, which was part of the JVP. After the party was outlawed by the Sri Lanka government, the JVP began an armed uprising in 1987. This sought to challenge the government and oppose the deal reached with India which would have divided the island. As the government violently crushed the uprising, Dissanayake went into hiding—the JVP’s leader and almost all high ranking party members were killed. However, Dissanayake reemerged in 1992, beginning to lead the Socialist Students Union as part of the reconstructed JVP. JVP later re-entered Sri Lanka’s political landscape by winning its first parliamentary election in 1997. In 2000, Dissanayake was elected to the Sri Lankan Parliament and became leader of the JVP in 2014.

Dissanayake is set to face an important obstacle during his presidency: restoring and stabilizing Sri Lanka’s economy. The economic difficulties that began in 2019 that culminated in mass protests in 2022 created a critical shortage of foreign currency, which is essential for importing goods from other nations. Hence, the government faced challenges in getting important supplies, especially as it almost faced bankruptcy. The national debt also rose to $83 billion, while inflation reached an all time high of 70%. The rise in inflation can be linked to the Modern Monetary Theory economic strategy pioneered by the Sri Lankan government,which saw huge sums of money printed in an attempt to keep lower interest rates to cover for the government’s excess spending. However this came at a cost of standard of living, as many citizens had a hard time purchasing fuel, medication, food and other basic needs.

“The economy is a key factor for voters in any democracy, and public perceptions of economic policies can shape elections. Economic struggles impact election results significantly, as the people are less likely to vote for the incumbent leader that caused their economic struggle and are more likely to seek a new leader who promises radical change,” Junior Mihika Moghe said.

Upon his election, Dissanayake declared that he would be taking rigorous anti-corruption measures and dedicated to bring reforms within the economic system after the financial crisis. To bolster the economy, he has announced that he will improve sectors for information technology, agriculture and manufacturing, and is promising that he will continue with negotiations for a $2.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in order to drag Sri Lanka out of the economic disaster and to decrease the hardships faced by the nation’s poorest individuals.

“After taking a look at his policies, while he may call himself Marxist, he is still working within Sri Lanka’s capitalist system. His policies revolve around the growth of trade and the private sector, which a Marxist government or ideology would fundamentally oppose. Thus, he seems to be a Marxist in name only” Sophomore Oshmi Poddar said.

All eyes, nationally and globally are on the newly elected president to initiate his policies and bring his country out of a long decline. He has the option to save Sri Lanka from a state of decline and place it on a path of recovery. The new president has the power, if he decides to do so, to begin reforms that would provide a brighter future for the people of Sri Lanka.