Sri Lanka’s left-leaning National People’s Power sweeps general election

By Shiran Illanperuma

On 15 October, data from the Election Commission of Sri Lanka showed that the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition scored a decisive victory in Sri Lanka’s first general election since defaulting on its external debt.

With 61.6% of the popular vote, the NPP won 159 seats in Parliament. This gave President Anura Kumara Dissanayake a supermajority in parliament and the power to make constitutional amendments.

The NPP won a majority of the popular vote in 21 out of 22 electoral districts in the country.

In the southern district of Hambantota, a traditionally left-wing Sinhala nationalist constituency that was the stronghold of the Rajapaksa family, the NPP secured 66.4% of the vote.

In the central Matale district, where the majority of voters are Tamil-speaking workers in tea estates, the NPP secured 66.2% of the vote.

In the northern Jaffna district, a stronghold of conservative Tamil nationalist parties, the NPP secured a plurality, with 24.8% of the popular vote.

This is a significant turnaround for the NPP, as during the presidential election [on 21 September], Dissanayake polled poorly in both the north and in the central tea estate regions.

These developments may indicate that traditional identity-based parties are undergoing a significant crisis of legitimacy, as economic grievances and bitterness toward the established political elite take centre stage.

They also indicate the success of the NPP in driving a grassroots campaign that emphasised national unity or, in its words, “a national renaissance”.

Several parliamentarians who were a mainstay in electoral politics for decades lost their seats entirely.

The disintegration of the two great poles of Sri Lankan electoral politics – the centre-right United National Party (UNP) and its breakaway Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and the centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and its breakaway Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) – continued.

Sajith Premadasa’s SJB, with just 17.7% of the vote, will sit in opposition.

Namal Rajapaksa’s SLPP secured just 3.1% of the vote.

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s new alliance, the New Democratic Front, secured just 4.5% of the vote.

Importantly, voter turnout declined from 79.5% in the September presidential election to 68.9% – the lowest turnout for an election since 2010. This likely played some role in boosting pro-incumbent bias as disenchanted voters of parties other than the NPP chose to stay at home.

In economic policy, the new NPP government is sitting on the ticking time bomb that is Sri Lanka’s 17th International Monetary Fund programme and its accompanying debt restructuring deal, sealed by Dissanayake’s predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe.

One of Dissanayake’s key campaign promises was to conduct an independent debt sustainability analysis and renegotiate this deal. This will be much easier said than done.

The debt restructuring deal negotiated by Wickremesinghe includes novel instruments such as “governance-linked bonds”, which link interest rates to the government’s willingness to pass “anti-corruption” legislation – corruption being a dog whistle reserved for countries in the Global South that are insufficiently subordinated to the neoliberal paradigm.

The deal also includes “macro-linked bonds”, which have no upside for Sri Lanka. According to these, higher gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates in the country will be met with higher interest payments to private bondholders, like BlackRock, which owns the largest share of Sri Lanka’s debt.

Some analysts predict an economic meltdown starting in 2027, when Sri Lanka will have to begin repaying its external debt, likely running down its foreign currency reserves and forcing it to borrow again from international bond markets.

To deliver on its campaign promise of system change, the NPP will have to put an end to this debt spiral and begin to industrialise the country.

In foreign policy, the NPP will have to navigate the recently elected Trump administration, which is likely to double down on the Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China.

Following the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009, the US has applied increasing pressure on the country, often leveraging human rights issues to push through a combination of economic and governance reforms.

In the past decade, the US has attempted to push through economic agreements like the “Millennium Challenge Compact”, which contained provisions to privatise land.

It has also promoted military agreements like the Status of Forces Agreement and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, both of which aimed to improve interoperability between the US and Sri Lankan military in order to draw the latter into the US’ new cold war on China.

Should it choose to take on these tasks, the NPP will have to tap into the insurgent multi-polar movement in the Global South in order to build a united front against debt and imperialism. They will need to rekindle the Bandung spirit and restore Sri Lanka’s leading position in the Non-Aligned Movement. Time will tell if the NPP is up to this task.

A decisive factor in the next four years will be how the internal balance of forces plays out within the NPP coalition, where the biggest party is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

Many of the NPP’s new parliamentarians are young and inexperienced and have few links with the old JVP. The latter was modelled on a Marxist-Leninist cadre-based party.

The ideological makeup of the NPP is therefore eclectic, including many middle-class professionals, academics, artists and political activists. Some have a markedly liberal cosmopolitan character that is in stark contrast to the old JVP’s base of mainly rural cadres known for their militancy and patriotism.

Managing this dialectic of old and new will be another challenge for Dissanayake.

Meanwhile, the shock of an electoral wipe may force the right-wing forces, namely the UNP and SJB, to regroup. They will take every opportunity to evoke a red scare and paint even the most moderate reform as a communist takeover. They will use their links with imperialists in the West to do this.

Finally, there is the traditional nationalist camp which includes the Rajapaksas, various splinters of the old left, and Sinhala nationalists. It is clear that it is primarily the disenchanted voters of this bloc that form the bedrock of support for the NPP.

Therefore, it is likely there will be much pressure on the NPP to live up to the populist and patriotic traditions of southern Sri Lanka. – Globetrotter

Shiran Illanperuma is a Sri Lankan political economist and writer. He is a researcher and editor at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He holds an MSc in economic policy from SOAS University of London. His research interests include industrial policy and structural transformation.