New Delhi: In what can be seen as New Delhi’s attempt to ensure that ties between India and Sri Lanka do not get comprised in case of a change of government under a new president, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, during his visit to Colombo this week, met all the four main candidates standing for the presidential election in the island nation scheduled for September 21.
Doval, who visited Sri Lanka primarily to attend the Colombo Security Conclave, held a meeting with President Ranil Wickremesinghe who is standing as an independent candidate in the upcoming election. He also held separate meetings with three other candidates - Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, and Namal Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).
Given the sudden change of regime in Bangladesh that caught India off guard, New Delhi will not take any chances in case of such a scenario in Sri Lanka.
The India-Sri Lanka relationship has traditionally been marked by bonhomie and a legacy of cultural, religious and linguistic interaction. Trade and investment have grown and there is cooperation in the fields of development, education, culture and defence.
Sri Lanka is one of India’s major development partners and this partnership has been an important pillar of bilateral ties between the two countries over the years. With grants alone amounting to around $570 million, the overall commitment by the Government of India is to the tune of more than $3.5 billion. Demand-driven and people-centric nature of India’s development partnership with Sri Lanka has been the cornerstone of this relationship. Grant projects cut across sectors such as education, health, livelihood, housing, industrial development.
When Sri Lanka was faced with an unprecedented economic crisis in 2022, India provided around $4 billion worth of aid. India also played a crucial role in collaborating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and creditors to help Sri Lanka restructure its debt.
Located close to India’s southern coast, Sri Lanka is of huge geostrategic importance for India. India has been expressing concerns about China’s growing economic and strategic influence on Sri Lanka, including Chinese investments in infrastructure projects and the development of the Hambantota Port. India has been trying to keep China away from a region New Delhi sees as to be under its sphere of influence.
It is in view of all this that Doval’s meetings with the four main candidates for the presidential election assume significance. Let’s take a look at these four main candidates.
Ranil Wickremesinghe
Though he is a leader of the United National Party(UNP), incumbent President Wickremesinghe is running as an independent candidate this time. He had run unsuccessfully in the 1999 and 2005 presidential elections. In 2015, he was appointed Prime Minister by President Maithripala Sirisena, leading a coalition government until 2019. During his tenure, he faced a constitutional crisis in 2018 but was reappointed as Prime Minister after it was resolved. He lost his parliamentary seat in the 2020 parliamentary election but re-entered Parliament in 2021 as a National List MP.
In May 2022, Wickremesinghe was reappointed as Prime Minister amidst the economic crisis mentioned above. Following the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022, Wickremesinghe became acting president and was subsequently elected as the ninth President of Sri Lanka by Parliament on July 20, 2022.
Having undertaken the task of rebuilding with the support of the IMF bailout, Wickremesinghe has managed to revive the economy turning it positive from negative growth in 2022. However, his hard economic reforms to complement the IMF facility have made him unpopular.
Wickremesinghe, 75, decided to run as an independent candidate this time with the hope of drawing cross-party support. He has also released his election manifesto titled ‘Five years of winning the country with Ranil’.
Sajith Premadasa
Son of former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, Sajith Premadasa is the current Leader of the Opposition of Sri Lanka and Member of Parliament for Colombo District. He is the current leader of the SJB.
He was elected to parliament in 2000 on a UNP ticket and was appointed Deputy Minister of Health in 2001, serving until 2004. He was appointed deputy leader of the UNP in 2011 and was appointed Cabinet Minister of Housing and Samurdhi in President Sirisena’s national government in 2015. He contested the 2019 presidential election in November 2019 as the candidate from the now defunct United National Front alliance, in which he polled second. In December 2019, he was appointed as the leader of the opposition and a member of the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka. On January 30, 2020, he was selected as the leader of a new UNP-led alliance.
The SJB, of which 57-year-old Premadasa is the leader now, is the largest opposition party in the parliament of Sri Lanka since 2020. It was initially an alliance that was formed with the approval of the working committee of the UNP to contest in the 2020 Sri Lankan parliamentary election. On February 11, 2020, the election commission of Sri Lanka announced that they had accepted the party as a recognised political party in Sri Lanka. Premadasa founded the party after a fallout with the leadership of the UNP, particularly with then-UNP leader and current president Wickremesinghe.
While the SJB traces its political views to the liberal-conservative principles of the UNP, some sections of the Sri Lankan media have argued that the party has gradually moved to the progressive and democratic political centre over time, and even espouses several centre-left ideals.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake
Dissanayake is a Member of Parliament from the Colombo District, the current party leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or JVP (from 2014) and the NPP alliance (from 2019). A former presidential candidate in 2019, he has been named as the NPP’s presidential candidate for the 2024 Sri Lankan presidential election, campaigning on an anti-corruption platform.
He has been a member of parliament since September 2000, having been either appointed from the national list or elected. Dissanayake, 55, served as the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation from 2004 to 2005 and Chief Opposition Whip from 2015 to 2018.
The NPP alliance is ideologically left-wing populist and working class centred. The NPP is led by the Dissanayake’s JVP. The predominant goal of the NPP is the nationalisation of Sri Lanka’s resources and making the country a developed nation through research and development in potential industry sectors while eradicating practices causing corruption under earlier governments.
Namal Rajapaksa
Son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and nephew of another former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Namal Rajapaksa is a lawyer by profession. He was the Minister of Youth and Sports from 2020 to 2022.
Rajapaksa, 38, contested the 2010 parliamentary election as one of the United People’s Freedom Alliance’s candidates in the Hambantota District and was elected to Parliament. Rajapaksa’s father had been an MP for the Hambantota District for 16 years before he was elected President in 2005.
He was reelected to parliament in 2015 and 2020. In 2020, he was appointed as the Minister of Youth and Sports by his uncle, then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. However, he resigned from the position during the mass resignation of the second Gotabaya Rajapaksa cabinet amidst the 2022 Sri Lankan economic crisis.
Rajapaksa was appointed as the national organiser of the SLPP on March 27, 2024. On August 7, the SLPP announced Namal Rajapaksa as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Rajapaksa is currently the youngest candidate in the election.
The SLPP was formed as a result of a split from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), a centre-left, Sinhalese nationalist, and post-colonial party. The SLPP borrowed some elements of the SLFP’s ideology but not its economic outlook, and is opposed to federalism in Sri Lanka. Political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda has described SLPP as “a right wing, neo-conservative party that favours authoritarianism”.
