‘Need a change’: Sri Lanka’s leftist win sparks hopes, bridges old divides

Colombo, Sri Lanka – Abdul Rahuman Seyyadu Sulaiman, 56, wanted to be heard.

As Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake left the polling station at the Abeysingharama Temple in Maradana, Colombo, on Thursday, Sulaiman called out to him, urging him to stop and listen to his grievances. The police quickly accosted Sulaiman and asked him to leave the venue.

“I want [Dissanayake] to listen to the woes of my people,” Sulaiman said later. “When the former government cremated a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic, I protested it. I spoke on behalf of my religion. Justice was not served to the Muslim people.”

Sulaiman’s hope that Dissanayake will deliver justice that his predecessors did not finds echoes across Sri Lanka, which overwhelmingly voted for the centre-left leader in presidential elections in September. Now, that hope will be tested like never before.

Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) won a landslide majority in Thursday’s parliamentary election, securing 159 seats in a house of 225 members – representing a comfortable two-thirds majority. The main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), under its leader Sajith Premadasa, won just 40 seats.

Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s New Democratic Front secured five seats, and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) of the Rajapaksa family, which dominated the country’s politics for much of the past two decades, won just three seats.

The NPP’s Samanmalee Gunasinghe, who contested and won from Colombo, said: “We are happy that now we can work for the people. They have shown they need a change from the old politics.”

According to political analyst Aruna Kulatunga, this is the first time since 1977 – when Sri Lanka changed its parliamentary system to proportional representation – that a single party has won a clear majority. This is also the first time that the incumbent president has the numbers needed to pass legislation in parliament without needing to rely on any allies or coalition partners.

“The importance of this result, therefore, is that the Sri Lankan political fabric, fractured along racial, religious and ideological lines, has got the opportunity to unite behind a single party,” Kulatunga said, “without the horse-trading that took place in the previous coalition governments and the resultant weakening of the election pledges given.”