By Uditha Devapriya –

Uditha Devapriya

It’s official – Dissanayake Mudiyanselage Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the ninth Executive President of Sri Lanka.

For those who don’t know, between 1948 – when it obtained independence from the British Empire – and 1977, the highest elected political official in Sri Lanka was the Prime Minister. He or she – Sri Lanka has the distinction of electing the world’s first woman Prime Minister – was invested with a tremendous array of powers, while the President served a more ceremonial role.

In 1978, the government of JR Jayewardene enacted a new Constitution which transformed the office of the Prime Minister into that of an all-powerful, almost omniscient Executive President. The then Prime Minister’s rationale was that the parliamentary system which had prevailed until then had become a hindrance to the head of state and that the country required a new political arrangement which would shield its leaders from the vagaries of parliamentary politics.

Upon enacting the new Constitution, Jayewardene paraphrased the 19th century British political theorist Jean-Louis de Lolme and quipped that the document would do everything except turn a man into a woman or vice-versa. Jayewardene, like his nephew Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had to bow out of the race at this year’s election, is widely seen as cunning, clever, and astute by a mainly Colombo-centric, English-speaking crowd, but a Machiavellian schemer at best and a quasi-dictatorial leader by other sections of the population.

Since 1978, constitutional scholars and activists have questioned the Executive Presidency. Multiple leaders have come to power promising to do away with it, but have only succeeded, with minor exceptions, in entrenching it further, mainly through constitutional amendments. The most consequential of these was the 18th amendment, passed in 2010 by then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which abolished term limits. To quote one civil society outfit from that time, it “made Sri Lanka’s over-mighty executive even more powerful.” The amendment was later rescinded.

And now, for the first time since 1970, and the first time in its post-1978 history, Sri Lanka has an all-powerful left-leaning leader as head of state.

As of now, Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD to most Sri Lankans) has been congratulated by numerous ambassadors and political officials from other countries, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US Ambassador Julie Chung, and British High Commissioner Andrew Patrick. Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Santosh Jha was the first diplomat to visit Dissanayake and wish him personally. Officials from other countries, including the UK – headed by a New Labour or soft left government – and Cuba have wished him as well.

For a vast majority of Sri Lankans and for the rest of the world, however, the question would be – what does Dissanayake’s victory mean for the country?

The alliance that Dissanayake heads, the National People’s Power (NPP), is ostensibly leftwing and radical-progressive. It is dominated by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or People’s Liberation Front, a left-wing party founded in the late 1960s which incorporated a mishmash of different Marxian strands, including Maoism. The JVP has historically cultivated support among rural peasants hailing from the country’s dominant ethnic group, the Sinhalese. The NPP, which projects itself as more social democratic, has attempted to reach out – genuinely, in my opinion – to other ethnic and social groups, including Sri Lankan Tamils.

A lot of the analyses, both local and foreign, have focused on what Dissanayake might or might not do as President. Some claim he will rescind or revise the country’s ongoing agreement with the International Monetary Fund, an agreement that is widely reviled by Sri Lankans. Others claim that the JVP’s historical antipathy to India, during the 1960s, means that Sri Lanka will yet again recalibrate its ties with China at New Delhi’s expense.

This is just speculation. The Indian media has its take on Dissanayake, as does the Western press, which seems hellbent on portraying AKD as a radical Marxist. Yet over the last two years, the NPP and even JVP have tried to moderate itself: it not only met with an IMF delegation, for instance, it also went on an official visit to India earlier this year. All of which suggests that the NPP, like every other political party in Sri Lanka, cannot be pigeonholed into one ideological label or another.

What AKD’s victory does portend is a huge turnaround in the country’s political system. Since 1948, Sri Lanka’s political leadership has swayed between different strands of the political elite. Most of the country’s Prime Ministers and Presidents have hailed from a wealthy urban upper middle-class, specifically from two of the oldest elite public schools in the country, Royal College and S. Thomas’ College.

AKD’s victory, in one sense, can be traced to 1956, when a left-nationalist government headed by a scion of the political elite, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, gave breathing space to the country’s dominant ethnic group, the Sinhalese, by making their language the official language of the country and enforcing several reforms, including nationalising numerous sectors in the country. Over the years some of these reforms have resulted in a souring of relations between the Sinhala and Tamil communities, a rift which can be seen in almost all electoral maps at almost all presidential elections. This year was no exception: while AKD won Sinhalese dominated areas, the Tamil and Muslim dominated areas were won by the Leader of the Opposition, Sajith Premadasa, who hails from the more centre-right Samagi Jana Balavegaya.

Dissanayake is not the first “son of the soil” or “man of the people” to become President in Sri Lanka: that distinction must go to Sajith’s father, Ranasinghe Premadasa, who became his party’s presidential candidate in 1989 despite fierce resistance to his nomination by the elite of that party. Similarly, in 2015, Maithripala Sirisena, the son of an agrarian family, won elections.

But AKD’s victory is significant because of the political brand he represents. The Colombo-centric commentariat are naturally afraid: some blame the incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, for making “liberal” and “centre-right” politics so unpalatable to the masses that they had “no option” but to vote for a “radical.” Such takes, if they can be called takes, reek of a deeply classist air. It’s not surprising that even liberal scholars have taken to demeaning Dissanayake on these grounds.

In Sri Lanka, liberal politics has almost always been pluralist and tolerant except where leftwing politics is concerned. This is, of course, a generalisation, but it reinforces my point about AKD: the man is an outlier, and he is here to stay. Like in much of Latin America – a region with which I believe Sri Lanka needs to connect somehow – this country has seen through its Pink Tide. You can celebrate it or you can bemoan it. I prefer to celebrate it.

*Uditha Devapriya is a commentator on politics, art and culture, and history in Sri Lanka who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com