By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-09-24 09:42:41 | Updated at 2024-09-30 11:28:16
6 days ago
Sri Lanka’s historic election of its first socialist president has sparked guarded optimism and doubts among analysts about his capacity to renegotiate the terms of the International Monetary Fund’s loans to the heavily indebted country.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the leftist National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s ninth president on Monday after securing 42.3 per cent of the votes in Saturday’s presidential election.
“I am not a conjuror, I am not a magician, I am a common citizen,” Dissanayake said during his oath-taking ceremony. “I have strengths and limitations, things I know and things I don’t. My responsibility is to be part of a collective effort to end this crisis.”
His NPP coalition, which includes the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and 20 other political groups, trade unions, and civil society organisations, had surged in popularity amid the nation’s worst economic crisis in decades.
In the 2020 general elections, the NPP garnered just 3.84 per cent of the vote. But as Sri Lanka grappled with crippling shortages of essentials such as medicine and fuel in 2022, and as the IMF’s US$2.9 billion bailout programme imposed austerity measures that strained daily life, Dissanayake emerged as a beacon of hope for many.
