President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will complete exactly one year as the ninth Executive President of Sri Lanka on Tuesday (23/9). Although he did not receive 50% + 1 votes in the first round of the vote count in the September 2024 Presidential election, the occasion of a leader of a left-wing political movement in Sri Lanka assuming power for the first time through a democratic election has historic significance in Sri Lankan politics.

Dissanayake’s victory also made Sri Lanka the second country in South Asia to elect a left-wing political movement that waged  armed insurrections to power, after Nepal. The people of Sri Lanka had high expectations from President Dissanayake and his National People’s Power (NPP) government, who came to power in a completely different political environment, following the unprecedented popular 2022 Aragalaya uprising in Sri Lanka three years ago.

Even though the leaders of the NPP, especially its flagship party, the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), openly asked that they be given enough seats to form a stable government, the people of the country gave them more than a two-thirds majority in parliament at the November 2024 general elections.

The JVP’s general secretary, Tilvin Silva, said before the elections that they had not asked for unlimited power from the people and that a simple majority in parliament would suffice.

It is not known to what extent the people believed the promise made by the NPP during the elections to bring about a ‘new political culture and systemic change.’ But in the elections, they clearly expressed their intense hatred and wrath towards the old traditional political parties and their leaders.

It is against this backdrop, that the performance of President Dissanayake’s one-year rule should be viewed.

Hopefully, after a year the president and the other leaders of the government have clearly understood the impracticality of the massive promises they made to the people during the national elections last year. The large majority of the population, who were expecting immediate  relief from the government to get rid of the economic hardships, were greatly disappointed.

The NPP promised to renegotiate the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the people were suffering as a result of the economic restructuring measures taken by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government on the advice of the IMF. But the new government had no alternative but to follow the same agreement without any change.

Although international financial institutions such as the World Bank have made positive comments on Sri Lanka’s economic situation, there has been no tangible change in the living standards of the majority of the people.

No one knows when the NPP government implements its own economic policies. President Dissanayake and the leaders of the government are very careful not to allow their administration to become mired in corruption, as they are well aware of the reasons why the people hated the previous rulers. 

The government is also active in taking legal action against past corruption and abuse of power. On many other fronts, the government’s performance has been lacklustre.

While there is a limit to what we can expect from a government in its first year in office, it is certain that a year’s performance of the NPP government is at least partly enough  to assess its future direction. Despite various criticisms of the JVP’s past politics, people expect a completely different approach from a government led by it after it came to power through democratic elections.

The leaders of the JVP will now clearly understand to what extent it is practically possible to bring about system change while retaining the state machinery that served the governments of the old traditional ruling class political parties. 

The fiery comments made by key JVP ministers, who are angry at the officials who are obstructing the government from carrying out its policies, are a clear  manifestation of that understanding.

The popular uprising in Nepal two weeks ago exposed to the world the failure of constitutional reforms and democratic experiment implemented for nearly two decades in Nepal, after the communist parties that led the popular movements that ended the monarchy came to power.

It is necessary for the JVP, as a revolutionary left-wing movement that waged two armed insurrections in the space of two decades in the last century, to take the developments in Nepal as a serious lesson. 

Meanwhile, For Sri Lanka, the new political culture is not just about ending corruption, malpractices, abuse of power and family-dominated politics. That new political culture must reflect the unavoidable change that must take place in ethnic relations and in the approach to a political solution to the national question that led to three decades of civil war.

Unlike previous rulers, President Dissanayake is more concerned with extending a hand of friendship to minority communities, especially Tamils in the north. He visited Jaffna several times during his first year in office and declared that his policy was to treat all communities equally.

However, the president and the government need to grasp the fact that there is no point in proclaiming equality for all, without at least showing concerns in taking remedial measures to the unique problems faced by minority communities who have suffered from the racist policies and repressive measures implemented by governments in the past.

The JVP has an unhealthy past that has vehemently opposed all attempts so far to find a political solution to the national question through arrangements for the devolution of power. They have not demonstrated that they are interested in mending their ways and following a different course from the past, even after coming to power. They should not remain prisoners of communalism.

Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide continues to deepen due to the ways in which ethnic relations and the national question have been handled by the Sinhala, as well as the Tamil polity up, to this point.

In matters relating to ethnic front between the communities, the North and the South seem to be two different worlds. To reverse such a worrisome situation, the President and the government must now be prepared to embark on a path that will not only win the confidence of the minority communities, but also free the majority community from the old ways of thinking.