NPP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is 9th Executive President of Sri Lanka
‘Vote for Change’ was the clarion call for presidential election
By: Upali Obeyesekere – CSLBC President
National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the 2024 Presidential Election to become the 9th Executive President of Sri Lanka. In a close three-cornered contest, Dissanayake emerged victorious over Sajith Premadasa (SJB) as the election of votes went into the second ballot. The Chairman of the Election Commission, R.M.A.L. Ratnayake officially announced the counting of second preference of the two leading candidates of the 2024 presidential election, in view of the prevailing situation of the vote results based on the first ballot count of the cumulative result of the 2024 Presidential Election, NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake leads with 5,634,915 votes (42.31%). SJB’s Sajith Premadasa is second with 4,363,035 votes, which is 32.76% of the total votes. Dissanayake’s majority over Premadasa was 1,271,880. Meanwhile, incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe has polled a total of 2,299,767 votes (17.27%) but failed to qualify for the second count. Namal Rajapaksa (SLPP) came in fourth with 342,781 votes (2.57%). The final voting after second ballot counting saw Dissanayake poll 5,634,916 votes over Premadasa who polled 4,363,035 votes. Anura Kumara Dissanayake (NPP) was declared the winner.
The world sends their wishes to President Dissanayake
Many world leaders including the U.S., India, U.K., EU, and other countries poured into the 9th Executive President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. So far, we have not seen a congratulatory message from our own Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau – intriguing. The United States of America’s president Joseph Biden congratulated Sri Lanka’s newly elected president Anura Dissanayake.
“Congratulations on your victory, @AnuraDisanayake,” Joe Biden said on social media platform X.
“The people of Sri Lanka chose you as their president in a free, fair, and peaceful election of which they are justifiably proud.”
Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi congratulated President-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayake for being elected as the 9th Executive President of Sri Lanka.
“Congratulations Anura Kumara Dissanayake, on your victory in the Sri Lankan Presidential election. Sri Lanka holds a special place in India’s Neighbourhood First policy and Vision SAGAR. I look forward to collaborating closely with you to further strengthen our multifaceted cooperation for the benefit of our people and the entire region,” Modi posted on ‘X’ (formerly, Twitter).
The election win is a remarkable turnaround for Dissanayake, who received just over 3% of votes in the 2019 presidential poll. But while he may have convinced a large section of voters this time, there are concerns over the political ideology of Dissanayake and his JVP, which is remembered for insurrections that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the late 1980s. Under normal circumstances, the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Sri Lanka’s presidential election would have been called a political earthquake. But with many having labelled the left-leaning politician as a strong frontrunner in the run-up to the poll, his win was not a massive surprise for Sri Lankans.
The 55-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayake heads the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, which includes his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), or People’s Liberation Front – a party that has traditionally backed strong state intervention and lower taxes and campaigned for leftist economic policies. His election win was defined as a ‘vote for change.’ The 17,140,354 registered voters in Sri Lanka were disgusted with past governments resorting to bribery, corruption, nepotism, et al. It will be a challenge, however, for the new president to implement his coalition policies in a country that has adopted liberalisation and free-market principles from the late 1970s. The resounding victory of the NPP came following a wave of public anger over the devastating economic crisis in 2022, when Sri Lanka ground to a halt as inflation surged and its foreign reserves emptied. The country was unable to pay for imports of food, fuel and medicines and declared bankruptcy. An unprecedented public uprising against the government’s handling of the economy forced then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in July 2022. “The result is a confirmation of what we have been campaigning for – like a drastic change from the existing political culture and the anti-corruption drive,” said a spokesperson for the NPP.
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and debt deal with bilateral creditors
Sri Lanka sealed an agreement in June this year with bilateral creditors led by Japan and India, formalising a provisional agreement that the debt-ridden island nation reached last November. Cash-strapped Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt in May 2022 after its economy was driven to the brink by a severe fall in foreign exchange reserves.
Sri Lanka Creditors – The Official Creditor Committee (OCC), led by Japan, France, and India, covers about $5.9 billion of Sri Lanka’s outstanding external debt of $37 billion, according to the country’s finance ministry. The Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) covers about $4 billion of outstanding debt, latest government data showed. Among bilateral creditors, Sri Lanka owed China $4.7 billion with debt to India standing at $1.74 billion. Japan, a part of the Paris Club group, was owed $2.68 billion. China, Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, is not an official member of the OCC.
Commercial loans, comprising of sovereign bonds and other time-bound loans, accounted for $14.73 billion.
IMF Delegation to Arrive in Sri Lanka Next Week for Key Talks
A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is set to visit Sri Lanka on October 2nd to discuss the third tranche and the future of the IMF program. The team will be led by Director of the Asia-Pacific Region Krishna Srinivasan and is expected to meet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Vijitha Herath. A $2.9 billion bailout programme by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) secured in March last year helped Sri Lanka stabilise economic conditions.
2019 Presidential Election
In the interests of our readers, it is important to recall what happened at the last presidential election in 2019. Gotabaya Rajapaksa (SLPP) emerged winner with 6924255 (52.25%) votes over Sajith Premadasa (NDF) who polled 5564239 (41.99%). Anura Kumara Dissanayake ONMPP) who came in third polled 418,553 (3.16%) votes. It is astounding how Dissanayake managed to amass 5,634,915 votes (42.31%) in the first ballot in the 2024 presidential election – a clear signal that he and his party worked hard in the last five years to inspire the voter that he is the agent for change.
The 2022 Sri Lankan protests, commonly known as ‘Aragalaya’, were a series of mass protests that began in March 2022 against the government of Sri Lanka. This uprising caused the departure of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and the eventual appointment in July 2022, of Ranil Wickremesinghe as “Constitutional President” elected by 134 members of parliament. Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as president with the backing of the Rajapaksas’ party. He stabilised the economy and negotiated a $2.9bn bailout package with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For the millions of Sri Lankans who took to the streets, the political change was nothing but a transfer of power between established parties and political dynasties. Rajapaksas were still controlling the destiny of Sri Lanka holding Wickremesinghe to ransom with the SLPP majority in parliament. This was the fact that no one could deny.
The NPP and Dissanayake capitalised on this sentiment, as many in the country saw him as someone outside the old order. Though he was a minister briefly when the JVP became part of a coalition government during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga in the early 2000s, Dissanayake’s supporters say he is not tainted by corruption or cronyism charges. The question is how his presidency will tackle Sri Lanka’s massive economic challenges. During his campaign he promised to lower taxes and utility bills. That means lower revenue for the government and will go against some of the conditions set by the IMF loan. He vowed to work within the broad agreement that the IMF has reached with the Wickremesinghe government. Dissanayake said he will negotiate certain details, particularly regarding the austerity measures.
300,000 rejected ballots amount to 2.2 per cent of total votes cast
Commissioner General of Elections Saman Sri Ratnayake said that 300,300 ballots were rejected during 21 September presidential election. This is 2.2 percent of the total votes cast.
Election authorities checking why so many ballots were spoilt. There is yet no clear explanation of how many voters at the presidential election on Sept. 21 spoilt their votes. Commissioner General of Elections Saman Sri Ratnayaka said that they will look at the rejected votes to understand why this happened. This process will take at least another week, he said. There was speculation that some voters have marked both crosses and numbers but there was no confirmation of this.
Many Sri Lankans have left the country between 2019 and 2024, and this was a main reason the voter turnout was low on 21 September compared to the 2019 presidential election. The record for voter turnout in a Sri Lankan presidential election was set in 2019 at 83.72 percent.
Our country is at a crossroads, and what we decide to do next will shape all our lives for a long time to simply accept things the way they are or cross our fingers that things will get better. It is a time to stand up and make the changes we want to see happen.
For 76 years Sri Lanka was ruled by an intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose. Family names such as Senanayake, Kotelawala, Bandaranaike, Premadasa, Rajapaksa, was commonplace in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Scions of these families provided leadership to our beautiful island nation in contrasting styles of governance. None of these leaders really led with passion to take Sri Lanka to its full potential. No one, unfortunately believed in John F. Kennedy’s immortal words – now a powerful quote: “Ask not what the country can do for you but ask what you can do for the country”.
21 September 2024 marked the ‘end of the old’, and ‘in with the new’, transition in political leadership. Sri Lanka has witnessed a dramatic change in political leadership by electing a president with a common background – educated, daring, and with a vision to change Sri Lanka in a way no other leader has dared to embrace.
The qualities of effective leadership include courage, strength, the ability to communicate effectively, knowledge, judgment, integrity, and people skills. A particularly important quality is vision, along with the power to implement that vision.
Sadly, a section of people in Sri Lanka are unable to accept this change. Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. We are now face with the obvious choice of accepting a fresh face in Sri Lanka’s political landscape.
It does not matter if this new leader has emerged from a remote village in the Anuradhapura district. It does not matter if this leader was schooled in the village school in Thambuttegama. Let us as patriotic Sri Lankans, accept this visionary leader as the new president of Sri Lanka for the next five years, until 2029. On behalf of the publishers of The Sri Lankan Anchorman, we wish President Anura Kumara Dissanayake well in the discharge of his duties for the next five years. As head of state, the president of Sri Lanka, is nominally the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The National Security Council, chaired by the president is the authority charged with formulating and executing defense policy for the nation.
Accepting responsibility for choices starts with understanding where our choices lie. This idea is wonderfully framed by the timeless wisdom of the ancient Serenity Prayer:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference”.