“We will renegotiate national debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”
Anura Dissanayake (56), a leftist politician, was elected as the new president of Sri Lanka, which had suffered national bankruptcy two years ago. Starting his five-year term on the 23rd, he announced his intention to implement policies such as direct cash support, saying, “I will save the poor and farmers who are suffering from the IMF’s austerity policies.” However, there are also concerns that such populist policies will worsen the chronic economic crisis. The BBC and others commented that this is the first time since Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948 that a leader with a strong leftist ideology has taken power.
President Dissanayake, who ran as a member of the leftist People’s Liberation Front (JVP), won 42% of the votes in the runoff election on the 22nd. He defeated former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who ran as an independent, and Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the main opposition People’s Power Party (SJB).
He initially won first place in the first round of voting with 39.5%, but failed to win a majority of the votes, leading to a runoff election. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes, the election commission counts the top two candidates again. Dissanayake, who came in third in the 2019 presidential election with just over 3% of the votes, has successfully won the presidential election again, beating current President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa, leader of the main opposition People Power Party (SJB).
Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was elected in the previous presidential election in November 2019, declared national bankruptcy in May 2022 due to COVID-19 and economic difficulties. Immediately after, he fled abroad, driven out by protesters. Former President Wickremesinghe, who was the Prime Minister at the time, was elected President by the National Assembly in July of the same year according to the Constitution, completing the remaining two years of his predecessor’s term.
Former President Wickremesinghe obtained $2.9 billion (about 4 trillion won) in support from the IMF in March of last year instead of undertaking structural adjustments. He implemented strong austerity policies such as tax increases and the abolition of energy subsidies. As public discontent grew, President Dissanayake won support from the poor by mentioning things such as “withdrawal of tax increases and the abolition of energy subsidies.”
President Dissanayake joined the JVP in 1987 while still a student, and entered parliament in 2000. Launched as a Marxist-Leninist party in 1965, the JVP staged armed uprisings against the government in 1971 and 1987, but failed and resulted in the deaths of over 80,000 people. In a 2014 BBC interview, candidate Dissanayake publicly apologized for the party’s past actions, saying, “Many things happened because of armed conflicts that should not have happened.”
Reporter Kim Yun-jin [email protected]
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2024-09-24 00:17:44