What cards Sri Lankan presidential election will bring to India’s deck

The Aragalya (students protest) movement in Sri Lanka in 2022 following the economic disaster that year led to a partial regime change—the ouster of President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa—but not a systemic political overhaul like in Bangladesh. The existing Parliament elected a new President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, credited with rescuing the country from economic meltdown for the rest of the term of Rajapaksa.

Provincial and local elections have not been held for nearly a decade for fear by the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that it would adversely affect their poll prospects.

The presidential election is slated for September 21, with 39 hopefuls contesting. Prominent contenders are Wickremesinghe, whose United National Party (UNP) was decimated in the last parliamentary elections with nil votes. The proportional representation system’s one seat has kept him alive. Having led the UNP since 1994, he has been PM five times but never made it as ’elected’ president.

More from Opinion

Sergio Gor’s senate hearing signals the future of Indo-American ties How Trump’s ‘War on Drugs’ buildup against Venezuela has a hidden agenda

In 2005, he lost to Mahinda Rajapaksa in his bid to be president, as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) supremo Prabhakaran ordered Tamils to vote for Rajapaksa. Wickremesinghe has promised to implement the 13th Amendment—devolving land powers—but is equivocal about granting police powers. Still, he is supposed to have the backing of 60 SLPP parliamentarians. He has said if he wins, he will form a national government, repeating what he said two years ago on becoming the ‘selected’ president.

While the General Secretary of UNP had suggested postponing presidential and parliamentary elections by two years to tide over the economic crisis, Wickremesinghe had favoured a referendum over postponement of elections. Despite his sterling work in reviving the economy, he is not a frontrunner.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

How army remains Pakistan’s biggest business house

60 years on, why 1965 India–Pakistan war still matters

It is therefore a toss-up between Sajith Premadasa, son of late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s Anura Dissanayake. Premadasa broke away from the UNP in 2020 to form his own party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and has roughly 60 lawmakers with him. He has pledged to implement 13A in full, inclusive of land and police powers. He has been most specific about devolution of powers, and the majority Tamil party Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) says it will vote for him.

The new kid on the block is Dissanayanaka, leader of the reformed Marxist-Leninist JVP, the largest constituent of the National People’s Power (NPP). Gallup polls are showing Dissanayake as the favourite, but he is an ‘unknown’ in national politics, and people are suspicious about the past and the Marxist Leninist credo. JVP spearheaded two insurrections in 1971 and 1988 and opposed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA) and Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) of 1987. It was bitterly anti-Indian and deeply suspicious of its interests and intentions in Sri Lanka.

Dissanayake has voiced disapproval of the Adani energy projects being awarded without tender and the high cost of power sales. His position on the Tamil question is positive and has said he will take forward the proposed new constitution and will establish ‘Accountability’ and Truth and Reconciliation processes. He has emphasised there will be no ethnic or religious discrimination. In the 2019 presidential elections, which Gotabhaya Rajapaksa swept, Dissanayake polled just 3.16 per cent of the votes.

Other candidates in the race include Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son Namal, who will likely split the SLPP vote. Like his uncle Gotabhaya and father, he is advocating ethnic nationalism and is categorical about not devolving land and police powers to Tamils.

The common Tamil contestant is P Ariyanethran. But Tamil parties are not consensual about him. Former Army Commander Gen Sarath Fonseka is not new to stepping into the ring. In 2009, the Army Commander who defeated the LTTE fought against his President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and lost badly. The Aragalaya activists have offered their own nominee, Nirwan Bopage.

Tamil politics has undergone a sea change, both on the island and across the straits. The Sri Lankan Tamil card has vanished from India’s domestic politics. After the passing of the Tamil National Alliance stalwart Sampanthan, who once supported the LTTE and later changed his stance to ‘a united, undivided, indivisible Sri Lanka’ could not keep united the new generation of post-LTTE Tamils. I got to know him in 2000 when I was assigned by the Government of India to investigate the loss of the invincible Elephant Pass by the Sri Lankan Army and why the LTTE failed to press on towards Jaffna. The Jaffna MP and advocate MA Sumanthiran from ITAK, the main constituent of the former TNA, has scoffed at the idea of a common Tamil candidate to contest the presidential election. People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) are backing former Chief Minister of the North, CV Vigneswaran, as the common candidate. The Tamil National People’s Party and Ceylon Congress are boycotting the polls. Sumanthiran is demanding a merged North East province, which was legally demerged in 2007.

Punters are putting their money on Dissanayake, though his victory is not a given. Premadasa and Wickeremesinghe are the other two in this race. The Aragalya youth favour Dissanayake as the other two represent parties which have been tried, tested, and failed. Still, many will keep Dissanayake at arm’s length. The election will be too close to call.

Sri Lanka’s economy suffered its first ever sovereign default in April 2022 when it ran out of foreign exchange reserves. It faces a debt of $37 billion, most of it to China, when the Rajapaksas splurged in white elephant projects in the south. It holds international sovereign bonds worth $12.5 billion. Colombo is receiving a $2.9 billion IMF bailout, which started in March 2023 for four years. India’s loan of $4 billion was a lifesaver, as Wickremesinghe has frequently announced. The Chinese turned away during the distress hour but were positive in Colombo’s debt restructuring along with the Paris Club, in which Japan, India, and France are co-chairs. India’s timely assistance has helped moderate the largely anti-India sentiment prevalent since the LTTE era.

For India, Sri Lanka is the pivot in its Indian Ocean Region strategy. Its two main interests are the long-pending implementation in full of the 13th Amendment for Tamils; and security (read China). Economic integration of Sri Lanka is an additional objective. Former President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, in his book The Conspiracy to Oust Me from Presidency, has accused certain foreign powers and local parties for his removal. On the other hand, in 2023, the Supreme Court judgement ruled that the Rajapaksa brothers—Gotabhaya, Mahinda, and Basil—along with top officials demonstrably contributed to the 2022 economic crisis and violated public trust. Gotabhaya hints in his book that India insisted he continue as president. It seems that former Army Colonel Rajapaksa was advised by his Army Commander to leave Sri Lanka as both brothers Gotabhaya and Mahinda went into hiding. Gotabhaya has since returned and is living with government protection.

With regime changes in the Maldives and Bangladesh, India cannot afford to lose Sri Lanka to China. The first country S Jaishankar visited after his renomination as foreign minister was Sri Lanka. It is his favourite country in the neighbourhood, as he earned his diplomatic spurs here. The $4 billion loan to Colombo is his brainchild. India has numerous projects in the works: Trincomalee Harbour and its expansion, Kankesanthurai Harbour, Sampur solar power, the Three Islands energy project (snatched away from China) oil pipeline from Nagapattinam to Trincomalee, wind power projects in Mannar and Pooneryn, and the finalisation of Comprehensive Economic and Technical Agreement. The Chinese ambassador voiced rare criticism of Sri Lanka for suspending the Three Islands project for ‘unknown reasons’.

Sri Lanka has lifted the ban on Chinese survey ships, which India calls spy vessels. Last month, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was in Colombo to preside over the annual Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), consisting of the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, in which Mauritius and the Seychelles are to be included later. Dhaka was not represented in the latest CSC due to regime change. Doval spent time meeting most of the presidential hopefuls and Tamil leaders.

Also last month, for the first time ever, INS Mumbai and three Chinese warships docked in Colombo together as both countries operate East and West Container terminals. In the past, India would take offence to Pakistan’s military chief visiting soon after Indian service chiefs. Chinese submarines docking in Colombo in 2013 attracted India’s ire, and since then no Chinese submarine has docked again.

India had invited, for the first time, Dissanayake to Delhi in February in a rare act of distributing its diplomatic eggs, which it failed to do in the Maldives and Bangladesh. While Premadasa and Wickremesinghe are known commodities, Dissanayake is not. He says he does not represent the JVP of the pre-1980s and has indicated his willingness to work positively with India. Ideally, New Delhi’s first choice would be Wickremesinghe, followed by Premadasa and Dissanayake.

The author is former GOC IPKF South Sri Lanka and founder member Defence Planning Staff, now Integrated Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.