Monday 23rd September, 2024

Sri Lankans spoke on Saturday, and it took the system a while to figure out what they had said. NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was finally declared President on Sunday night after a preferential vote count, which was a novel experience.

The wave of popular support Dissanayake claimed to be riding was not as huge as it was made out to be; however, its outcome was quite impressive, especially for a person who could obtain only 418,553 votes (3.16%) in the 2019 presidential race. On Saturday, Dissanayake polled as many as 5740179 votes, inclusive of preferential votes.

The NPP leader benefited from a huge protest vote against the mainstream parties that had been in power and their offshoots. A split in the ITAK’s block vote owing to the participation of Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, described as the common Tamil presidential candidate, in Saturday’s presidential race, stood Dissanayake in good stead; it apparently dampened the Tamil voters’ enthusiasm to some extent, as evident from a drop in the voter turnout in some parts of the North and the East, where the ITAK backed SJB presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa.

Dissanayake has done for the JVP what its slain leader Rohana Wijeweera failed to do in 1982. However, he won the presidency by dissociating himself from the JVP’s core Marxist ideology. The JVP/NPP succeeded in reimaging and repackaging Dissanayake with special emphasis on sartorial and tonsorial elegance. But a snap general election is expected soon, and the question is whether the JVP/NPP will be able to make all its candidates similarly appealing to the public. Dissanayake will have to obtain at least a working majority in Parliament to implement his pledges and retain popular support.

The SLPP-UNP regime, which survived an attempt to behead it in 2022, like Miracle Mike, the headless chicken, has suffered the coup de grace at the hands of the JVP/NPP, so to speak. Now that there has been a clean break from the former dispensation, Dissanayake will have to make good on his promises. The people have a long wish list, but they may not be so unfair as to demand that all promised relief be granted forthwith, but there are pledges they expect him to honour fast, action against the corrupt being a case in point.

Parliament is expected to be dissolved shortly. It is hoped that the NPP will not make the same mistakes as the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, which resorted to ill-conceived measures such as haphazard tax cuts in a bid to win the 2020 general election. President Dissanayake will have to tread cautiously.

The people have given Dissanayake a passing grade, and if he is desirous of bettering it and consolidating his electoral grains, he will have to live up to the people’s expectations, which are extremely high. Otherwise, his political rivals may pull a surprise on him come the next presidential election, or the very people who voted for him on Saturday might take to the streets, the way they did in 2022 against Gotabaya.

President Wickremesinghe would have been able to win Saturday’s contest hands down if he had not ruined things for himself politically. He misused his executive powers to defend the corrupt Sri Lanka Cricket officials despite a unanimous parliamentary resolution calling for their removal. He even undermined the judiciary on several occasions. First, he defied a Supreme Court (SC) order pertaining to the allocation of funds for the Local Government elections in 2023, and then he ignored an SC directive that IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon be suspended and an Acting IGP appointed. It is only natural that the people were wary of giving him a mandate.

Interestingly, in some areas, SJB candidate Sajith Premadasa and President Wickremesinghe, between them, polled more votes than Dissanayake. But they apparently thought that united they would fall and divided they could stand; Dissanayake benefited from their enmity.

The SLPP, which secured the presidency and mustered a two-thirds majority in Parliament in 2019 and 2020 respectively, has been reduced to a mere 342,781 votes (2.57%). Namal Rajapaksa lost ignominiously in the districts organised by his father and uncles for the party––Kurunegala, Hambantota and Gampaha.

It is heartening that the presidential election ended without any incidents of violence or serious malpractices. Democracy has triumphed, and praise should go to all candidates and their parties and independent groups, the Election Commission, the police, the armed forces, polls monitors, public officials and the public.

Let all political parties and their leaders be urged to take cognisance of the poor state of the economy and cooperate to steer the country out of the present crisis.