Anura Kumara Dissanayake

Anura Kumara Dissanayake (born November 24, 1968, Thambuttegama, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka]) is the ninth executive president of Sri Lanka (2024– ) and leader of the leftist People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna; JVP). Dissanayake’s election marks a major turning point in Sri Lankan politics. Unlike most previous presidents, he does not come from a political family. Additionally, the JVP has a controversial past because of its violent Marxist insurrections in the 1970s and ’80s, for which Dissanayake has apologized since becoming party leader in 2014. His victory in the presidential election reflects public frustration in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic collapse, as well as a desire to break away from the country’s traditional political elite.

Early life and education

Dissanayake was born in Thambuttegama, Anuradhapura district, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). His father was a laborer, and his mother was a housewife. He became involved in student politics as a JVP activist in 1988, during the JVP’s second Marxist insurrection (1987–89), following the party’s first uprising in 1971. During this period the JVP used terrorism and assassinations as its primary tactics, killing thousands of people it accused of being capitalist and imperialist sympathizers. The government responded with a harsh crackdown, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, with some estimates as high as 60,000. Despite interruptions to his education due to his political activities and the government’s persecution of JVP members, Dissanayake continued to be active in youth politics into the 1990s, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Kelaniya in 1995.

Early political career

Dissanayake entered the Sri Lankan parliament in 2000 as a representative of the JVP, and he has continued to work in the parliament ever since. From 2004 to 2005 he served as Sri Lanka’s minister of agriculture, livestock, lands, and irrigation. He became leader of the JVP in 2014, and shortly afterward he began to rehabilitate the party’s image, apologizing for the excesses of the JVP’s insurrections in the ’70s and ’80s and stating in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka) that the party had rejected violence:

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Twice we took up arms; however, in the future we assure the people of Sri Lanka that this will never ever reoccur. We assure the people that the only way we will come into power is by winning the trust of the people. We assure the people of Sri Lanka that we will never ever take to arms again. During the last 25 years, the JVP was subjected to violence on numerous occasions. However, we never resorted to violence, and I assure the public that they need not have any fear: the JVP has rejected violence forever!

Dissanayake served as the chief opposition whip in the Sri Lankan parliament from 2015 to 2018. In 2019 he established the National People’s Power (Jathika Jana Balawegaya; NPP), a progressive coalition of 21 political organizations, and ran in that year’s presidential election, in which he ultimately received only 3 percent of the vote.

Presidency

During the 2022 Sri Lankan economic crisis, the country was unable to pay for imports, leading to severe shortages of food, medicine, and fuel. The crisis was driven by corruption, poor monetary policy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the apparent inability of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government to address these urgent issues. As a result, the country descended into a state of anarchy, and protesters stormed the presidential palace in one of the year’s most shocking and memorable events.

Extreme public disillusionment with the Sri Lankan political establishment created an opportunity for an outsider candidate to challenge the traditional political elite in the 2024 presidential election. Dissanayake positioned himself as the antithesis of the establishment and ran on an anticorruption and antipoverty platform along with promises to combat racism and unite Sri Lanka’s long-divided Sinhalese and Tamil populations. On September 22, 2024, he secured 42 percent of vote, winning the election. He was sworn in the following day.

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Despite its Marxist roots, the JVP has increasingly softened its rhetoric under Dissanayake’s leadership. As president, Dissanayake has inherited a country still grappling with a prolonged crisis, and his primary task is to restore stability and economic functionality. Dhanath Fernando, CEO of the Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, has said of Dissanayake, “He now advocates for a pro-trade approach, emphasizing the simplification of the tariff structure, improving the business environment, reforming tax administration, ending corruption, and positioning the private sector as the engine of growth. However, his stance on debt negotiations remains unclear.” Although the JVP is still a leftist party, its current policies represent a significant departure from its previous, socialist stances.

Since assuming office, Dissanayake has both proclaimed a “new era of renaissance” for Sri Lanka and stated that “we have deeply understood that we are going to get a challenging country.…We don’t believe that a government, a single party or an individual would be able to resolve this deep crisis.”