In an interview to assess the enormous parliamentary mandate President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power coalition has won and how he is likely to use his sweeping powers, one of the foremost political analysts in Sri Lanka says president Dissanayake will be one of the island’s most powerful and popular presidents but adds that he is a pragmatist and not, as much of the Western press has described him, a straightforward marxist.
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the executive director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, in a 25-minute interview, analyses the parliamentary mandate Sri Lanka’s president has received with 159 seats, which is more than two-thirds, and nearly 62% of the vote. This is the first time Sri Lanka’s proportional representation system has produced a two-thirds majority.
More importantly, president Dissanayake’s NPP, whose largest component is the JVP, a Sinhala majority party, has won the majority of votes in the North, which is dominated by Tamils, in the East, where there is a large Muslim population, and in the hill country, where there is also a large Tamil population. This clearly indicates the extent to which the perception of the JVP has transformed since the 1980s, when it was widely viewed as anti-Tamil and Sinhala racist.
