Johns Hopkins University Press

In 2024, Sri Lanka experienced a historic political transformation through peaceful elections that put an end to the country's dynastic politics. Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) of the left-wing People's Liberation Front won the presidency with 56 percent after second-preference votes, while his National People's Power coalition secured an unprecedented 159-seat parliamentary supermajority. This dramatic shift followed Sri Lanka's 2022 economic crisis and bankruptcy, which discredited traditional political parties. The elections marked several firsts: the first use of ranked-choice voting redistribution, the largest number of first-time legislators, increased female representation, and unprecedented minority support for a Sinhalese-led party. AKD's victory—following a 2019 campaign in which he gained only 3.2 percent of the vote—augurs a significant political realignment focused on anti-corruption and economic stability.

Writing about Sri Lanka's January 2015 presidential election a year after it happened, I called it "a win for democracy"1 given how challenger Maithripala Sirisena had turned strongman incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa out of office following a decade in power. Rajapaksa and his grasping family had mixed ethnic chauvinism with autocracy while pilfering and squandering national resources in an effort to impose a political dynasty on the country.2

There have been twists and turns since then, most notably a calamitous return to power by the Rajapaksas between 2019 and 2022 that triggered the worst economic crisis the island republic has seen in its almost eight decades of independence. In September and November 2024 came a presidential followed by a parliamentary election. Anura Kumara Dissanayake (known as AKD) of the left-wing People's Liberation Front (JVP) won the presidency on September 21 while running alongside the National People's Power (NPP) parliamentary coalition. He quickly dissolved the 225-seat unicameral Parliament, ending its five-year mandate a year early and convening a fresh election.

In that contest, held on November 14, the NPP won 159 seats. It was the first time any group captured a supermajority under the present system of open-list proportional representation. The Rajapaksas' Sri Lanka People's Front (SLPP), which had won 145 seats in the previous election, received just three seats. The coalition led by the United People's Power (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa was reduced to 40 seats (from 54), while the alliance associated with incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe won five seats. The voting in both instances—presidential and parliamentary—was some of the most peaceful that the country has seen in recent times. The resulting political realignment has put a new [End Page 79] elite into office, severely weakened what had been the leading parties, and disrupted the Rajapaksa clan's dynastic ambitions.3

After 1956, when the forces of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism won a key election, the Sinhalese lower classes and castes gained new pathways to upward mobility. These came, however, at the cost of a turn toward ethnocracy and the rise, in reaction to it, of Tamil separatism. The ensuing plunge into brutal civil conflict lasted more than a quarter-century, ending with the Tamils' military defeat in 2009.4

The 2024 elections represent another critical point, for several reasons. First, the presidential contest was the first to require an additional vote count to distribute voters' second-ranked preferences. AKD was the first choice of 42 percent of the electorate, but his two main rivals—incumbent Wickremesinghe and the ideologically similar opposition leader Premadasa—together drew just over 50 percent. The incumbent who finished third with 17.3 percent of the ballots was eliminated, and each ballot cast with him as the top choice was distributed to AKD or Premadasa if the voter picked either as that voter's second choice.5 This second count raised AKD to 56 percent and made him president. Had Wickremesinghe and Premadasa managed to join forces, with one of them bowing out, the resulting unified campaign would likely have swamped AKD.

Second, both of 2024's ballotings saw longstanding, dynastic elites ousted. Close to 150 members of the new Parliament will be first-time legislators. Indeed, all who served in Wickremesinghe's cabinet and contested lost, while more than sixty prominent politicians chose to bow out rather than run again and face defeat. This included the Rajapaksas: For the first time in almost ninety years, no one from the family ran to represent their hometown of Hambantota. The new Parliament and 22-member cabinet are filled with inexperienced politicians, though as a group they are better educated and more professional than those whom they have replaced. This includes the twenty-one women elected plus one woman named to a seat—up from a total of twelve women lawmakers in the previous legislature—with most being attorneys and educators.6

Third, the two elections left once-powerful parties badly weakened and made the JVP and NPP dominant. AKD is the only person to become president without winning a majority in the first round, but his NPP was victorious in 21 of 22 electoral districts and captured the highest number of votes recorded in a parliamentary election.7 Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)—the main party of Sinhalese nationalism going back decades—were already in decline, and the 2024 elections confirmed it. The two parties are so out of favor that the SLFP did not contest either election, while Wickremesinghe ran for president as an independent and his supporters mostly ran for parliament as part of the New Democratic Front. [End Page 80]

Fourth, while the 56-year-old AKD is not the first president to come from the lower classes, he is the first to reach the position despite coming from a party with roots in violent Marxism: The JVP unleashed a pair of bloody left-wing insurrections—the first in 1971 and the second in the late 1980s—that may have killed more than 110,000 people.8 AKD served as a message-runner for the second insurgency, and had to go into hiding for several years after the Sri Lankan armed forces defeated it. He became a JVP politician once the government unbanned the party and it resumed parliamentary politics in 1994. From then on, the JVP forswore violence and remained committed to the democratic process despite faring poorly in parliamentary and presidential elections. Party leaders stood out for their austere lives and practice of donating their salaries to the JVP's general fund. When the JVP national convention elected AKD party leader in 2014, he apologized for the party's violent past. All this and forming the NPP with twenty other groupings helped rebrand and legitimize the JVP.

Finally, while minorities have no choice but to vote for a Sinhalese Buddhist in presidential elections, they usually vote for ethnic parties during parliamentary elections. But this time around, minorities turned to the NPP and ditched their usual ethnic parties. Some Tamil and Muslim candidates did win while running under ethnic-party banners, but the high level of support that the NPP has claimed suggests that, if the coalition is properly handled, it could become the basis of a politics rooted in inclusion and pluralism.

In all previous elections the ideological divide between the two main candidates was narrow but in this mainly three-cornered race, there were stark differences between AKD and his two rivals.9 Premadasa's SJB and Wickremesinghe's UNP differ little ideologically. Instead, their split is factional: The SJB is a UNP spinoff founded by party members who left due to discontent with Wickremesinghe's leadership. Together, the UNP and its splinter group represent the old guard. AKD, though he has sat in Parliament since 2000, represents a new elite. Political scientists disagree on how to classify critical elections, but with AKD going from just 3.2 percent in the 2019 presidential election to winning the office, and with the NPP going from just a trio of seats in the 2020 parliamentary elections to 159 seats this time, these 2024 polls surely mark a political realignment.

There is no gainsaying that the result would be different were Sri Lanka not bankrupt. Successive governments have long subsidized public [End Page 81] services while paying no heed to budget balancing; since 1965 the island has experienced no fewer than sixteen International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailouts. In April 2022, the government was forced to declare that it could not pay its debts.10 By then, it owed bilateral, multilateral, and commercial entities around US$35 billion, which was only a portion of the total national debt of about $84 billion. Foreign-exchange reserves had dropped to around $50 million, and inflation was spiking to over 70 percent (its average for the year would be 46 percent).

The Rajapaksa family's corruption and misgovernance came in for intense blame. In July 2022, Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Mahinda's younger brother) resigned the presidency and fled. With Parliament's constitutionally required vote of approval, Wickremesinghe moved up from the premiership to become president. It had fallen to him, while prime minister, to declare national bankruptcy. By then the island had endured daily power cuts lasting twelve-plus hours, long lines for essentials such as fuel and medicine, and a massive, four-month aragalaya (struggle) aimed at chasing the Rajapaksas from office.11

The aragalaya protesters also decried Parliament's corruption and wanted it dissolved, but President Wickremesinghe stopped their attempt to storm the legislature's building and suppressed the demonstrations. The seventeenth IMF rescue program soon materialized, and the economy began to steady. The higher taxes and austerity that came with the bailout raised the poverty rate to 25 percent (from around 13 percent in 2021), however, and caused 60 percent of the population to lose income. The debt-to-GDP ratio topped 119 percent in 2022, while according to World Bank figures GDP shrank 7.8 percent in 2022 and 2.3 percent in 2023. Growth was 2.6 percent in 2024 and is projected to be 2.8 percent in 2025, but another bankruptcy could ensue once debt repayments resume in 2028.

With parties that had long alternated in office facing blame for the country's suffering, the JVP-led NPP coalition found its way to power open. Neither AKD nor his coalition had run the island into debt or negotiated the painful IMF programs that raised taxes and increased poverty. Now entrusted by the voters with responsibility for the country's course, the president and the NPP will need to work with creditors and the international community to honor debt obligations while reducing poverty and the cost of living, pursuing ethnic reconciliation, and balancing relations with major powers such as neighboring India.

The Road to Elections

While hundreds of parties have run for office since independence in 1948, the UNP, the SLFP, and (in the past decade) the SLPP have dominated politics. All three represent political dynasties. Ranil Wickremesinghe's relatives have mainly controlled the UNP since its founding [End Page 82] in 1946, and it is called with good reason the "uncle-nephew party." S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, finding no path to leadership within the family-run UNP, broke away to form the SLFP in 1951. He won the crucial 1956 election that installed Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism at the center of power, and his wife became prime minister after he was assassinated in 1959. Their daughter was Sri Lanka's president from 1994 to 2005. Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose father and uncle were prominent politicians from the country's south, sidelined her on his way to winning the 2005 election as the SLFP nominee, enriching relatives and working to set up a dynasty while in office. When he lost in 2015, he moved over to Parliament, his family founded the SLPP, and they dominated politics until the 2022 crisis forced them out.

As president, both Mahinda and Gotabaya manipulated Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and fanned Islamophobia and anti-Tamil sentiment even as they and their cronies indulged in corruption, undermined the rule of law, and weakened democracy. Their nefarious legacy should have prevented Mahinda's son Namal from running for president, but he did anyway—and could not crack 3 percent. In the parliamentary elections, their SLPP fared no better, winning just 3.1 percent. The AKDNPP realignment is real.

Sri Lankans received the universal franchise in 1931, and national elections are usually held on schedule. Turnout is generally close to 80 percent and winning at the ballot box is the key to legitimacy. In the 2024 presidential and parliamentary contests, turnout was 79 and 69 percent, respectively. In the latter instance it appears that NPP supporters flocked to the polls while their opponents were less enthusiastic.

Ranil Wickremesinghe long craved the presidency but achieving it by vote of Parliament rather than the people clouded his authority, the more so as he was the sole MP from the UNP and had named himself to the seat (which his party had been awarded based on its nationwide vote share). His relationship with the Rajapaksas also troubled voters. Wickremesinghe had only become prime minister when Mahinda fled the premiership as protests raged in May 2022, and his accession to both that office and, three months later, the presidency owed much to Rajapaksa support, some of it possibly involving bribery.12 The 2022 presidential succession was constitutional, but the background to it, Wickremesinghe's decision to crack down on protests, his shielding of the Rajapaksas from prosecution as they reentered politics, and the stringencies of the IMF deal did nothing to help his popularity.

As president, however, Wickremesinghe did help to stabilize Sri Lanka's economy, and he deserves credit for that. The four-year, $2.9 billion Extended Fund Facility that he signed with the IMF in March 2023 gave the strapped island of 22 million people a path forward out of economic disaster. Sri Lanka is expected to meet all its six-month revenue benchmarks as the funding arrives in its eight agreed-upon installments. [End Page 83]

The island reached lower–middle-income status in 1997, which ended its ability to borrow from multilateral bodies such as the IMF at concessionary rates. Ten years later, the Rajapaksas began to raise funds by issuing international sovereign bonds (ISBs)—short-term instruments with high interest rates of up to 8.5 percent. Debt shot upward,13 and onto it the would-be dynasts piled nonconcessionary loans from the People's Republic of China (PRC). These went to bankroll vanity projects such as a large (and largely unused) cricket stadium bearing Mahinda's name and a nearby airport (also named for Mahinda) that is more frequented by wildlife than by planes.

Mahinda Rajapaksa seemed to feel that the PRC was his money tree. An economic advisor who regularly met the president told me that Xi Jinping, during phone calls with his Sri Lankan counterpart, would urge more borrowing from Beijing to finance Chinese-built infrastructure projects.14 China is not Sri Lanka's biggest creditor—commercial lenders located mainly in the United States hold the lion's share of the island's debt—but PRC loans for white-elephant projects have made the financial picture worse.

The upshot is that successive governments have resorted to debt rollovers. This means using foreign currency—acquired from tourists and from Sri Lankans working abroad who send money home—to make interest payments, then borrowing more to cover shortfalls. During stints as prime minister that covered most of the years 2015 through 2019, Wickremesinghe also loved to issue ISBs. Such irresponsible borrowing amid corruption, waste, political instability, and national bankruptcy formed the backdrop to the 2024 elections.

Presidential Election

A quirk of Sri Lanka's ranked-choice system for choosing the president—which was introduced through the 1978 Constitution—is that few voters fill in a second let alone a third preference. Some worry that they might spoil their ballots, while the parties discourage their supporters from adding second and third choices, and candidates never run on "make me your second choice" appeals. Consequently, while more than thirteen-million ballots were cast for president, AKD and his eventual runoff rival together captured only about 173,000 preference votes.

As noted, a Premadasa-Wickremesinghe alliance would likely have bested AKD in the initial balloting. Premadasa, however, headed a party that held 24 percent of the seats in Parliament, and he was unwilling to play second fiddle. The failure to embrace ranked-preference voting hurt as well: Most of the nearly 2.3 million Wickremesinghe voters likely preferred Premadasa over AKD, but few bothered to list Premadasa as their second preference. [End Page 84]

Nevertheless, AKD finished 1.2 million votes ahead in the runoff, and one can point to several reasons for this. The first, as noted, was the economic and financial crisis. Second, he broadened his coalition; the NPP embodies this. Third, he is a familiar figure with a winsome personality and no dynastic ties. Fourth, he apologized for the JVP's history as a violent Marxist movement and reiterated a commitment to practical democratic politics. He works to maintain ties with small- and medium-sized businesses, and his NPP parliamentary leader is an academic from outside JVP ranks. The party still uses the red hammer-and-sickle banner and refers to AKD as "comrade" on its webpage, but it has left Marxist insurrection far behind. There are many individuals and families in Sri Lanka who suffered from the JVP's violence and will never vote for it, but more than three decades later, the perceptions of many others shifted enough to give AKD a chance.

The 75-year-old Wickremesinghe rested his campaign on his depth of experience. He had done the hard, difficult work of dealing with creditors and the IMF; only he could lead the country forward. Premadasa, age 57, lacked a distinctive issue or appeal. He claimed that he would renegotiate the terms of the IMF bailout but failed to differentiate himself from the incumbent. His verbose and highfalutin speeches hardly helped, and having now lost two presidential and parliamentary elections he will likely be ousted as SJB leader. AKD too promised fresh IMF talks. Many grasped that this was unrealistic but turned to the exrevolutionary anyway. He was an outsider untainted by the corruption, profligacy, and self-dealing that had wrecked the economy and forced middle-class Sri Lankans to wait in line for essentials. Both his presidential campaign and his coalition's parliamentary campaign focused on saving Sri Lanka from waste, corruption, and the poverty they cause.

Wickremesinghe's popularity took hits not only from austerity but from the Easter Sunday 2019 terror bombings that occurred when he was prime minister. These Islamist attacks killed more than 270 people with coordinated explosions at three churches (two Catholic and one Protestant) and three hotels. Bad relations between Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena were blamed for the failure to prevent the bombings: Muslim community leaders had warned authorities about the terror group, but were ignored.

The attacks aided the Rajapaksas, who had taken credit for defeating Tamil separatists and now pointed to this victory while claiming superiority on security issues. In 2023 came claims that Rajapaksa-friendly intelligence officials had colluded with the terrorists to ensure a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency.15 Wickremesinghe's slow and duplicitous handling of the investigation (supposedly to shield the pro-Rajapaksa forces) led Colombo archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, the island's leading Catholic prelate, to forcefully criticize him. Catholics form about 6 percent of Sri Lanka's population and typically vote UNP. This [End Page 85] time, however, many backed AKD as he vowed to fully investigate the bombings and prosecute all persons found to have been involved.

In 2019, Gotabaya had carried all sixteen majority-Sinhalese districts; five years later, AKD won all but one of them. Unlike Gotabaya, who had said that the Sinhalese (they are around 75 percent of all Sri Lankans) elected him, AKD embraced an inclusive message following his win even though most Tamils and Muslims (the two communities combined equal about a fourth of the populace) had voted for his opponents. Leading up to the parliamentary elections, AKD and the NPP reached out to minorities, including those living in the six districts where Sinhalese are not a majority. The response from these minorities contributed to the political realignment.

Choosing a New Parliament

Parliamentary elections tend to come after presidential polls in Sri Lanka, with the newly elected chief executive weighing in to benefit the presidential party or coalition in legislative races. Agreeing with the aragalaya activists' demand that the old Parliament had to go, AKD had made it a campaign promise to dissolve the legislature and call fresh elections if he won. The day after he was sworn in, he made good on his vow. From a party perspective it was an easy call since the NPP held only three seats in the body.

Leading up to November 14, the NPP and AKD loomed large on social media. Many who had not voted for him were nonetheless intrigued by his victory. His anticorruption speeches from Parliament or the hustings were shared widely and helped to further burnish his image. His pick of a woman, Harini Amarasuriya, to serve as prime minister impressed many as well. The only two previous women premiers had been from the Bandaranaike family. Amarasuriya comes from outside the JVP. She is a college sociology teacher and has studied in India, Australia, and Scotland. No academic has risen so high in Sri Lankan politics. She entered Parliament for the NPP in 2020 and has distinguished herself there for moderating the image of the JVP-led NPP coalition.

The orderly conduct of the presidential election, and the calm that followed, undercut opponents' claims that AKD and the JVP were preparing to unleash violence against their political rivals. Amid the quiet, the island's stock market did not crash, the rupee did not depreciate, and the international community did not shun the new government—all things that AKD's foes had warned might occur. Instead, the new leadership met with the IMF and vowed to stick to existing agreements. AKD signaled policy continuity by asking both the finance minister and the head of the central bank to stay at their posts. Both officials are highly regarded and have played important roles in dealing with the IMF to bail out the island and restructure its debts. [End Page 86]

Finally, the NPP's detractors charged that AKD and his camp lacked executive experience and would fumble governance tasks. Instead, the three-member interim cabinet to which the new president handed multiple portfolios worked effectively. In October, Sri Lankan security forces prevented extremist attacks against Israeli tourists.16 This contrasted favorably with the poor coordination and incompetence that had led up to the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks.

In the parliamentary contest no less than in the presidential race, corruption, waste, and poverty were prime AKD and NPP targets. (There were standard interest-group appeals, too: Farmers were promised a bigger fertilizer subsidy, and fishermen help buying fuel. About four-million Sri Lankans work in fishing and agriculture.) High food prices remain a worry, but in the early days of the AKD presidency the public could at least see that the police where questioning and even jailing prominent politicians suspected of misdealings. When Wickremesinghe sent a letter asking for postpresidential perks that included more than a dozen cooks, 163 security personnel, and more than twenty vehicles, AKD denied the requests, publicized the letter, and said that former officials' perks would come under review. The new president himself tries to project an austere, unpretentious image by staying often at JVP headquarters rather than only at Colombo's stately President's House, which had been the residence of British governors going back to 1804. All this helped to increase the NPP's support even as the opposition was falling into disarray.

The Road Ahead

The NPP had been confident that it would win a majority in Parliament, but was clearly surprised by passing the 150 seats needed for a supermajority. While in the past supermajorities have led to misgovernance, the NPP's status as a legatee of the aragalaya coupled with the apparent determination to crack down on corruption could lead to a different outcome this time. The NPP manifesto promises to get rid of the executive presidency and institute a new constitution that builds on previous draft constitutions. Other governments made the same promises but failed to deliver even when enjoying a supermajority in the legislature. If the NPP does get rid of the powerful executive presidency it will likely be toward the end of AKD's term and after the party has revamped state institutions in ways that fulfill the aragalaya's demand for a "system change."

In his first speech as president, AKD named stability rather than change as his priority. This suggests that Marxist proclivities will not be at the forefront of his governing agenda—the IMF agreement will not allow them, and countries that the JVP has historically looked up to (such as the PRC) have themselves evolved to make room for markets [End Page 87] and enterprise rather than strict adherence to state socialism. The great challenge will be to find ways to cut poverty and boost living standards while meeting the IMF agreement's revenue targets. The president and his advisors realize that the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and bilateral donors will only help (via grants or concessionary loans) if the government can show that it is doing all it can to stabilize the country politically and economically.

Playing up their anticorruption credentials has been a big part of the JVP-AKD narrative, and the new government has already made decisions to show that it is serious about this. How far it will go on this front remains to be seen, but investigating prior corruption while avoiding current corruption must be a keynote of the governing agenda. The investigations launched so far are playing well with the public, and so are bound to continue.

Minimizing ethnic tensions

In addition to being far-leftist, the JVP was long among the most anti-Tamil and anti-Indian political groups in Sri Lanka. When AKD became leader in 2014, the party's hostility to minorities was already beginning to fade, and he has advanced that trend. One outcome that made the 2024 parliamentary elections truly historic was the NPP's performance in predominantly Tamil and Muslim areas throughout the island. For the first time ever, the two predominantly Tamil districts in Northern Province voted for a party—the NPP—led by Sinhalese. Indeed, the NPP set a record by winning all but one of the half-dozen districts in which minorities predominate. This parliamentary election, like the presidential election before it, was devoid of divisive ethnoreligious dog whistles, and minorities especially hope it signals a more pluralism-friendly milieu.

The NPP manifesto calls for repeal of the controversial 1978 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), and minorities (who have been the PTA's foremost victims) fully support this. It is therefore disconcerting that the NPP now signals that repealing the PTA may not be among its priorities. Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists and many within the military (including many security-services retirees who back the NPP) consider the PTA a necessary tool to protect the country from minority extremism, and this perhaps explains the party's indecision.

Similar considerations may explain why the NPP vacillates about the Thirteenth Amendment. This change to the 1978 Constitution was passed in 1987 under Indian pressure and is related to India's attempt to solve the Sri Lankan civil war. The provision makes Tamil (like Sinhala) an official language and English a link language, and further envisions a devolution of powers (including policy authority) to the provinces. Buddhist nationalists have long opposed especially devolution, as they would like to see an island whose every province (there are nine) has a Buddhist majority, despite two that currently do not. A few months [End Page 88] before the presidential election, Harini Amarasuriya said that the NPP favored fully implementing the Amendment. AKD quickly walked back her comments, and while he and the NPP have promised devolution there is no reason to think full implementation is in the cards. A new constitution could get rid of the Amendment completely and try a different means to devolve power for the sake of ethnosectarian peace.

The vast majority of those who voted for AKD and the NPP previously voted for the Rajapaksas, who were maestros when it came to fanning Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. Sri Lanka's ethnocracy enabled the Rajapaksas' divisive politicking, and this is a reality that AKD and the NPP must navigate while trying to appease minorities. For instance, before the presidential election, Buddhist nationalists and clergy complained that AKD and his colleagues were not visiting Buddhist temples, meeting with clerics, or hosting monks at party rallies. The new president and his cabinet made it a point to visit major temples, pay court to leading prelates, and include Buddhist ceremonies in their inaugurals—all measures that Buddhist clergy warmly received. The constitution stipulates that "The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana [Buddha's teaching]." The monks and nationalists will ensure this remains so.

That being the case, the NPP will refrain from Rajapaksa-style efforts to rouse Buddhist feelings against minorities. Tamils could be brought on board by troop reductions in Northern Province and the return of lands taken over during the war to their Tamil owners. The government could also halt the antiquities ministry from colluding with radical Buddhist clerics who want to seize land in the island's northeast by linking certain locales to Buddhist ruins. Moving forward, perhaps an agreement will be reached with Tamil leaders and the UN High Commission for Human Rights on issues dealing with alleged war crimes, although criticism of the military could run the risk of handing nationalists a chance to challenge the government.

In short, AKD and the NPP are unlikely to worsen ethnic relations, and will look with favor on civil society's attempts to reduce ethnoreligious tensions. Blatant discrimination against minorities seems not in the cards. The NPP's manifesto also promises to work toward improving the living conditions of Indian (also known as Estate) Tamils and to make it easier for all Tamil speakers to use the Tamil language in dealings with the police and other institutions. The cause of reconciliation stands to benefit, even if meaningful movement toward accountability may not be in the offing.

Foreign policy

The JVP has historically been antipathetic to both the West and India, and bitterly denounced the 1987 Indo–Sri Lanka Peace Accord and its provision for an Indian Peace Keeping Force that [End Page 89] deployed to the island between July 1987 and March 1990 in an effort to end the civil war. Anti-Indian rhetorical ferocity dwindled within the mainstream JVP—breakaway factions never relented—and the party gradually embraced nuance while criticizing the IMF and similar institutions. Partiality toward the PRC, which JVP cadres had once revered as the home of Maoism, was revealed when the party—at the lowest point of the financial crisis—uttered no complaint about Sri Lanka's having to cough up millions for contaminated Chinese fertilizer. Politicians from the JVP have also been mostly quiet about the cricket stadium and other Chinese-financed white elephants that dot the landscape. The expectation was that AKD's victory would be seen as a "win" for China, just as Gotabaya Rajapaksa's victory in 2019 had been seen as a win for China while Mahinda Rajapaksa's 2015 defeat was considered a win for India.

Under normal conditions AKD might lean openly toward China, but bankruptcy imposes limits, and the new president will above all need to be practical. In foreign policy, this will mean maintaining multiple alignments—with none favored too much over the others—and avoiding words or actions that could be criticized for compromising the island's sovereignty. There are many Sri Lankans who combine Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism with hostility toward India and the West. If AKD cozies up too closely to pro-Western interests, he will hear from these people.

The new president says that stability must precede reforms, so his focus will be the economy and easing at least some of the austerity measures that are hurting the poor. If he and his alliance want to stay in power, they will need to pursue policies—both domestic and foreign—that improve Sri Lanka's economy. The president is therefore likely to privilege foreign policies that are seen to benefit Sri Lankans. India could enjoy an advantage in this regard given its proximity and the possibility for Sri Lankans to begin forging links to economic developments in South India. The Indians seem to be touting this as they try to endear themselves to the new government.

While many in AKD's coalition still favor Beijing over Delhi, anti-India feeling no longer runs hot. The massive support—including rice shipments—that India gave its offshore neighbor during the 2022 bankruptcy crisis is appreciated even as Beijing's slowness to restructure bilateral loans is noted. If any new policies lean toward Beijing, they will by the same token not be detrimental to India's security. In May 2024, Sri Lanka inked a twenty-year deal to buy electricity from wind power stations that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is building in Northern Province. NPP leaders have said that they plan to reevaluate the deal, which they believe disfavors Sri Lanka. The agreement, however, is likely here to stay, although the Adani Group may agree to reduce electricity prices.

It may be a while before the new government's request to join the expanded group of BRICS countries takes effect, but by gaining approval [End Page 90] to join its New Development Bank Sri Lanka could access loans in advance of membership. The BRICS countries favor multipolarity and the ability to pursue multi-aligned foreign policies, and this squares with what AKD and most elites think is best for Sri Lanka. Within the BRICS orbit, China, Iran, and Russia seek to undermine U.S. global influence while other countries try to avoid crossing the United States. Sri Lanka is small and deeply in debt; there is no mileage for it in U.S.-unfriendly stances. In October 2024, AKD declined to send a representative to the BRICS summit in Russia, citing the election campaigns as the reason. Domestic affairs come before foreign policy.

Sri Lanka has experienced a change in government that is akin to a peaceful revolution. This speaks to the country's democratic ethos. Foreign powers should take note of the goodwill being accorded the new president even by those who did not vote for him, and refrain from pressing him to pursue policies inimical to the island's interest lest doing so create an intra-JVP (and possibly a Buddhist-nationalist) backlash that could threaten political stability and everything hinging thereon.

Local and provincial elections are coming; the NPP will dominate them. Control of every level of politics in the country will be the acid test of whether the new president and his hardcore JVP supporters have left Marxism behind. They should recall how Mahinda Rajapaksa was treated like a king in 2009 for vanquishing Tamil separatism, only to be defeated in 2015, and how Gotabaya's landside of 2019 gave way to his desperate flight of 2022. Things could turn sour for AKD as well, all the more so as Sri Lankan democracy will hold him accountable.

Neil DeVotta

Neil DeVotta is professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University and the author of From Ethnocracy to Kakistocracy: Sri Lanka's Pathway to Ruin (forthcoming).

NOTES

1. Neil DeVotta, "A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka," Journal of Democracy 27 (January 2016): 152–66.

2. Neil DeVotta, "Ethnoreligious Nationalism and Autocratization in Sri Lanka," in Sten Widmalm, ed., Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2022): 285–97.

3. Standing no chance of being elected, Mahinda Rajapaksa's son and heir apparent Namal chose not to run but will enter Parliament thanks to the single seat the SLPP obtained via the National List, which allows nominations based on a party's share of the national vote.

4. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000).

5. There were 39 candidates who registered to run for president, and the preference votes on all ballots were similarly distributed between the top two candidates.

6. Nineteen of the 21 women are from the NPP. Yet women, who form 52 percent of the electorate, remain underrepresented. Due to its landslide victory, the NPP qualified to nominate eighteen members to parliament via the National List. Only one was a woman. See Vidyamali Samarasinghe, "NPP and Women's Parliamentary Representation," Groundviews, 11 November 2024, https://groundviews.org/2024/11/11/npp-andwomens-parliamentary-representation.

7. While 42 percent voted to elect AKD president, nearly 62 percent voted for the NPP.

8. By some estimates, the 1971 and 1987–89 insurrections killed 12,000 and 100,000 people, respectively. This includes deaths caused by the security forces. See "Death of Club Wasantha: Mirror to Sri Lanka's Underworld Nexus," Daily FT, 16 July 2024, www.ft.lk/ft_view__editorial/Death-of-Club-Wasantha-Mirror-to-Sri-Lanka-s-underworld-nexus/58-764286.

9. Pradeep Peiris, "2024 Presidential Election: Two-Cornered, Three-Way Fight," Polity (Social Scientists' Association, Colombo), https://polity.lk/2024-presidential-electiontwo-cornered-three-way-fight-pradeep-peiris.

10. Covid-19, the Ukraine war, Gotabaya's tax cuts, infrastructure spending, and the addled decision to switch instantly from chemical to organic fertilizer (which wreaked havoc with farming) were all proximate causes that helped to bankrupt the country.

11. For an incisive account of the aragalaya and its outcome, see Jayadeva Uyangoda, "Sri Lanka's Aragalaya in 2022: Citizens Reclaiming Democracy and Agency," in Jayadeva Uyangoda, ed., Democracy and Democratisation in Sri Lanka: Paths, Trends and Imaginations, 2 vols. (Colombo: Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, 2023), 2:299–336.

12. Neil DeVotta, "Colombo's Controversial New President," East Asia Forum, 24 July 2022, https://eastasiaforum.org/2022/07/24/colombos-controversial-new-president.

13. Umesh Moramudali, "Sri Lanka's Foreign Debt Crisis: Deep Roots?" in Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Amjad Mohamed Saleem, eds., Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka (London: Routledge, 2024), 148–49.

14. Author's interview, Colombo, February 2015.

15. Hannah Ellis-Petersen, "Previous Sri Lanka Government Accused of Blocking Investigation into Easter Bombings," Guardian, 24 December 2023, www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/24/previous-sri-lanka-government-accused-of-blocking-investigation-into-easter-bombings.

16. In an interesting twist, Farhad Shakeri, the Iranian allegedly responsible for planning the attacks, had also planned to assassinate U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. See "Justice Department Announces Murder-for-Hire and Related Charges Against IRGC Asset and Two Local Operatives," U.S. Department of Justice, 8 November 2024, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-murder-hire-and-relatedcharges-against-irgc-asset-and-two.

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