Sri Lanka’s Political Moment in 2024: Part 1
In the wake of the National People’s Power (NPP) party’s remarkable victory in the 2024 presidential election, some observers have been quick to attribute the result to a protest vote against traditional political parties and misinterpret its failure to secure a clear majority. The Indian media in particular – which has always had a deep and nuanced understanding of Sri Lankan politics – has betrayed a desire to mislead the rest of the world about the nature of the political transformation in the island by charactering the political leanings of the new president and his government as “Marxist”. However, what all analysts seem to miss is that this disruption of the traditional bases of political power is a result of a deliberate strategy on the part of the NPP, which succeeded largely due to the failure of the old guard to reform and wrest back control of the political agenda of the country.
Back in 2015, immediately after the improbable defeat of the Rajapaksa regime, I wrote my analysis of the significance and implications of the events that led to the election of Maithripala Sirisena as president.
I pointed out specifically that “..the emergence of the JVP as a serious third contender in the Sri Lankan political sphere under the leadership of Anura Kumara Dissanayake [AKD] is perhaps the most progressive outcome [of the presidential election in 2015].” And also that “’..it remains unlikely at this stage however, that the JVP would emerge as a serious contender to become the leading party in opposition. Yet the possibility that they will challenge the dominance of the SLFP and UNP remains – unless credible reforms are made to the structure and representative makeup of those two main political parties. Whether the threat of being overtaken by the JVP proves sufficient motivation for the SLFP and UNP to undertake such a serious reform agenda remains to be seen.”
AKD was by far the most charismatic political leader in Sri Lanka in 2015 and he has remained so, uncontested, in the decade since. Nevertheless, the JVP brand with all its baggage, fairly or otherwise, remained unelectable and it was impossible to imagine it shedding any of that baggage until well into the 2030s with at least the passing of the generations that bore the trauma of the late 1980s. Looking forward from 2015, I could not have envisaged the grassroots of the JVP supporting a rebranding of itself to become the NPP no matter how charismatic its leader was and much less the rapid disintegration of the good governance regime and the disastrous fracturing of the political space in the aftermath and as a consequence of the Easter attacks of 2019 and the re-emergence of the Rajapaksas led by Gotabaya.
However, the key takeaways from my analysis then remain relevant still and the events of the subsequent decade culminating in the election of AKD as president has opened up opportunities for a redefinition – if not a renaissance – of the opportunities and possibilities in the political landscape. As it is with moments like these in history, the country also faces grave threats that need to be identified and managed so that the opportunities of this political moment are also not tragically lost to us like those of our past.
To that end, I will present my analysis in three parts.
First revisiting key arguments from the analysis I did in 2015 to identify the present developments and outcomes that could be foreseen then and also what I had missed out or simply got wrong. To the extent that the country at present is a product of what it was before 2015, and also the events between 2015 and the present, we will identify important historical undercurrents that have always shaped and will continue to influence the course of the country into the foreseeable future and differentiating between the positive undercurrents that will propel us forward and the more regressive ones that should be avoided or redirected. We will reflect on some of the lessons from our past from precolonial times to the Gotabaya-Wickremasinghe regime that seem to evade popular discourse and explore ways that learning the wrong lessons from our past may impede progress at best or make us falter again like many generations have faltered before us. Indeed, learning the right lessons from history has been a peculiar weakness of ours.
The second and third parts of my analysis will focus on economic and geopolitical policy considerations in 2024 and beyond.
The shifting political agenda: from security to good governance
One of the most glaring gaps in the mainstream discourse about AKD’s election as the ninth president is that we have so far failed to identify that it was an inevitable result of over a decade long, deliberate transformation of the political landscape that commenced a year before Maithripala Sirisena was elected President in 2015. My analysis of that transformation published in 2015 when it was still in its infancy bears strong testimony to it.
In that analysis nine years ago, I argued how historically Sri Lanka’s political discourse has been dominated by economic and security concerns, a natural focus for a developing nation in a complex geopolitical environment. However, a significant shift began to occur around 2014 spearheaded by AKD, the charismatic leader of the JVP, which later evolved into the NPP.
AKD’s strategic use of social media, particularly Facebook, to bypass traditional media restrictions marked a turning point. His speeches, easily accessible to a wide audience, began to reshape the political narrative. Instead of focusing solely on economic development and national security, AKD highlighted issues of corruption, nepotism and systemic violence within the country’s political and administrative framework. This shift introduced good governance as a central political concept, a term that would become increasingly prevalent in the political discourse.
The 2015 presidential election: a harbinger of change
The 2015 presidential election, which saw the defeat of incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa, was an early indicator of this shifting political landscape. While the victory was largely attributed to the strategic manoeuvring of the UNP, the 2015 analysis correctly identified a more fundamental change: the electorate’s newfound prioritization of political reform and good governance over traditional concerns of national security and economic development.
This shift was not incidental but the result of a concerted effort by AKD and the JVP to transform the political consciousness of Sri Lankans. As a party that lacked the experience of exercising broad political power and had the stigma of being instigators of two armed uprisings since independence, it lacked the credentials needed to convince the electorate that it would be responsible managers of the economy or defenders of the state. However, its strength as a party bound by a strict code of conduct and an immaculate record of party discipline was that it had a clean record with no allegation of corruption. Even though it had led armed uprisings against two successive governments, it was not linked to the underworld or criminal elements of the country unlike the parties that had ruled the country since independence. A rallying cry for good governance played to its strengths and targeted its opponents’ biggest weaknesses. In that context, its success in steering the political discourse away from security and economic concerns and convincing one of the major parties to run on a ticket promising good governance, which as it became clear in hindsight that it was never able to deliver on, was a remarkable coup that certainly no one recognised at the time and few have recognised even now.
It was perhaps the first major victory for the JVP since its inception but the fact that it managed to win it without drawing undue attention – let alone seeking recognition for it – from the electorate or its opponents was even more remarkable.
Good governance: the persistence of a good idea
The two major parties that ruled Sri Lanka since independence has both been dominated by families and clans. The reins of the SLFP had merely shifted from the Bandaranaikes – for their lack of a viable heir – to the Rajapaksas. The government that came to power after Sirisena’s election was almost entirely founded on the power base of the UNP, which is still dominated by families that trace roots back to the three daughters of Mudaliyar Don Charles Gemoris Attygalle. Maintaining their grip on these national parties had forced these families to nurture minor political dynasties in the regions and maintaining power within the familial structures from top to bottom had organically given rise to a complex web of violence and corruption within the power structures of both major parties.
In 2010 Mahinda Rajapaksa called the presidential election when he was at the hight of his popularity as the leader who ended a 30 year civil war that many feared would never end. Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP, on the other hand, was seen as an appeaser of the LTTE who had steered his government through a failed peace process from 2002 to 2004 that almost enabled the cessation of a separate state. The reaffirmation of national security after the war “victory” rather than a fear of security threats was always going to be the main theme of the 2010 presidential election where Wickremesinghe’s leadership was a major liability for the UNP. So the UNP managed to lure the victorious general who led the final push to “victory” who as a military man lacked the political maturity to realise that he was being scapegoated by his own coalition to be their candidate. The JVP, then led by Somawansa Amarasinghe, supported the campaign against the burgeoning power of the Rajapaksas. At that stage, assuming it even had an ambition of gaining power eventually, it certainly lacked the vision or creative insight to carve out an independent political strategy of its own. The alliance or cooperative understanding it built with the likes of Tiran Alles during that time may yet prove to be their Achilles heel.
The nepotism, corruption and violent nature of the Rajapaksa regime all but negated the national security credentials it had earned for ending the war and this would prove to be its key vulnerability that the UNP led presidential campaign of Maithripala Sirisena would exploit using the good governance slogan to oust it in 2015.
However, given the inherent nepotism, and the corruption and violence that was required to maintain it, the UNP led government and the weak president it had propelled to power were not only unable to deliver on their promises of good governance but led to some of the most serious betrayals of public trust in the country up to that point. This made the need for good governance in the country and the inability of the two main parties to reform themselves to be able to deliver on their promises even more apparent.
The Easter attacks and the temporary return to security concerns
The growing unpopularity of the good governance regime and the alternative government’s weak economic credentials coupled with its reputation for corruption and violence created a power vacuum by the end of 2017, which opened the way for an alternative third political force. But the JVP’s political brand remained a major impediment, particularly its association with the failed economic policies of the old communist bloc. Its revolutionary instincts were also not palatable to largely conservative voter base.
The bond scam of the UNP’s good governance regime made people wonder whether the excesses of the ousted Rajapaksa clan were all that bad after all but the existence of a large political vacuum that none of the parties could fill led to a sense of great hopelessness by the middle of 2017, which often found expression even within the educated and liberal minded middle classes as a desire for an all-powerful and benevolent dictator who could punish wrongdoers at all levels and put things straight once and for all.
But the power vacuum was a result of people wanting to establish good governance, which none of the available political options were able to fill. And for as long as the power vacuum existed, no government would be stable. It should have been quite clear to any political analysts worth their salt that the only way to address this issue is to shift the political narrative and with it the people’s political priorities away from their need for good governance.
Both major parties had, over seven decades, built for themselves equally strong credentials on economic mismanagement but the Rajapaksa clan had earned their credentials on national security by ending the war that no one else could surpass. All that was necessary was a political manoeuvre that would decisively shift the peoples’ priorities back to national security.
The 2019 Easter Sunday attacks provided this decisive shift and succeeded in bringing the Rajapaksa clan decisively back to power with more than a two thirds majority in parliament. However, this return to traditional political narratives proved to be short lived when credible doubts were raised about the people who had masterminded the Easter Sunday attacks and their motivations.
With it, the cry for good governance would re-emerge with unprecedented force culminating in the aragalaya in 2022.
The aragalaya movement and the NPP’s strategic positioning
The economic crisis of 2022 and the subsequent aragalaya movement marks a crucial turning point in the Sri Lankan political landscape and perhaps of the world. It remains unprecedented in what an almost completely peaceful and enlightened organisation of citizen actor network was able to achieve. While its precedents in the occupy movement were also largely peaceful, it failed to achieve any tangible political goals. The Arab Spring, on the other hand, was able to achieve its expressed goals but was not peaceful and was not able to sustain its victories and build on what it was able to achieve. The collapse of political structures in some of the countries that the Arab Spring swept through have still not been rebuilt, entrenching anarchy and violence at levels far worse than before.
The aragalaya as a non-hierarchical political movement of citizen actors was initially thought to be a flash in the pan that would fizzle out as quickly as it emerged. But it lasted for nearly six months, was overwhelmingly peaceful and at the end of it the most popularly elected president in the country’s history had been forced to resign and one of the most powerful governments since independence was left in tatters. More importantly, the people and rulers would learn something that neither party would forget – that any government that usurped their mandate could be ousted by peaceful means other than at the ballot box. Everyone is on notice.
While the protests were largely grassroots and apolitical the NPP, building on the foundation laid by AKD’s charisma and ability to read the popular pulse, strategically positioned itself within the movement. It successfully commandeered the narrative back towards issues of good governance, corruption and systemic reform – themes it had been consistently emphasising for decades. This ability to adapt its long standing message to the immediate concerns of the aragalaya movement demonstrated the NPP’s political acumen and enabled it to connect directly with a broad spectrum of society.
The 2024 election: culmination of a long term strategy
The NPP’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, therefore, should not be viewed as a sudden or unexpected event. Rather, it represents the culmination of a carefully crafted, long term political strategy that focussed on gaining enough credibility among people to become a force that can define the political agenda and priorities. Equally importantly, it has successfully leveraged the changing dynamics and mediums of public discourse. It may have been its exclusion from the mainstream media landscape that pushed it to look for alternative media to speak directly to the electorate but it was its superior understanding and strategic exploitation of the social media landscape, although not perfect and leaves much room for improvement, which gave them a distinct advantage vis-à-vis the traditional political parties.
The traditional parties that continue to focus on accumulating regional power players, exploiting communal divisions and accumulating funds to drive their political campaigns lag the NPP’s acumen by at least a decade and a half and may continue to struggle for years to come to attract the talent that can formulate a vision and execution power that can seriously challenge the NPP.
The NPP itself is not without serious deficiencies and vulnerabilities. Given the JVP’s breeding grounds among the comparatively disadvantaged students from rural backgrounds in the university system, there remains a significant resistance to the party’s identity and brand among the more worldly and liberal minded middle class. While individuals such as Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya have created avenues for transforming this image, there remains a perception that it will be difficult even for a leader with AKD’s charisma to open the NPP from within to more liberal and worldly voices from privileged backgrounds who may potentially unseat some among the cadre of the parent JVP whose influence within the party may suffer as a result.
The party’s consistent focus on good governance, anti-corruption and systemic reform – themes first prominently introduced to the political discourse by AKD in 2014 – had gradually reshaped the political priorities of a significant portion of the electorate. While the project of establishing frameworks for good governance as well as imposing adequately severe consequences for bad faith actors within the political and state administrative framework will be a never ending one, the NPP needs a vision and roadmap for expanding the breadth and depth of the political discourse in order to guide the people to realise their full potential and the country to its deserved place in the community of nations.
The NPP’s rise from a minor party to a position of national leadership reflects the deeper transformation in the political landscape that began to manifest with the aragalaya but has by no means concluded. It is the first tangible step in a gradual but significant shift in the electorate’s priorities and expectations of their political leaders, that the people of Sri Lanka will walk down through coming generations, despite possible temporary setbacks, with or without the leadership of the NPP and other political parties.
A new era in politics
The NPP’s ascent to power is not merely a protest vote against traditional parties but the result of a systematic, decade long effort to transform the political discourse and priorities. From AKD’s strategic use of social media in 2014 to the party’s deft navigation of the aragalaya movement in 2022, the NPP has consistently positioned itself as the vanguard of a new political era focused on good governance and systemic reform. Now in power, they face new challenges both from within and without and will need to continue to reform itself as a party to remain relevant and effective as a political force. All indications so far are that they have the will and the leadership to do so. However, the lag between the NPP and their political rivals may result in a weak opposition that may have adverse consequences for the overall health of the country’s democracy. It is well known that Sajith Premadasa, who ended up second in the presidential race, is no match for AKD in charisma or intellect and is not even the fourth of fifth best leadership option within his own party.
It is against such a backdrop that Sri Lanka is entering this new chapter in its history and the challenge for the NPP will be to translate their campaign promises into tangible reforms. Its success or failure in doing so will likely shape the country’s political landscape for years to come, potentially cementing the shift in political priorities that it has so carefully cultivated over the past decade. I hope this analysis spanning the evolution of the Sri Lankan political landscape over at least a decade and a half will serve as a testament to the importance of identifying underlying political currents when reading political outcomes. It reminds us that while singular events may capture headlines, it is often the gradual, consistent efforts to reshape political narratives that lead to truly transformative change.
