The Sri Lankan government said in April 2022 that it would not pay its debts, the first time since the country became independent. President Wickremesinge got money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to try to get the country’s economy back on track after taking over from Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Some experts and Wickremesinge followers like the deal with the IMF, but Dissanayake has said that the JVP might try to renegotiate it so that many everyday Sri Lankans don’t have to go through as much pain.
After the deal, the government raised taxes, cut subsidies, and changed the way the public sector worked. These changes made living costs go up and social aid benefits went down. Low- and middle-income families have been hit the hardest by higher taxes and fewer supports, especially on things like fuel and energy that are needed by everyone.
Credit: Reuters photo
Dhananath Fernando, CEO of the pro-market Advocata Institute in Colombo, says that Dissanayake’s current economic policy is very different from his traditional communist position.
A think group on the left called the Institute of Political Economy (IPE) has asked for Sri Lanka’s 17th IMF deal to be renegotiated. IPE spokeswoman told Al Jazeera that renegotiating the IMF deal is necessary for Sri Lanka’s economic recovery and future security. He did not want to say anything about specific candidates or their policies. The conditions that are in place now are not in line with best practices and are very dangerous for the country’s finances and people’s well-being.
“A restructured agreement with the IMF that includes substantial debt reduction, realistic fiscal targets, and respect for Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over its economic policies will provide a foundation for sustainable growth,” says the IPE. This advice is for whoever becomes the next president of Sri Lanka.“
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“They cover up their Sinhala Buddhist racism by saying they stand for unity,” Perera said of Dissanayake. “They have absolutely no democratic stance,” he added. “They have never publicly condemned any ethno-racist extremism.”
For Viyangoda, the JVP was “racist when it was founded by Wijeweera in 1968.” The JVP has long identified with Sinhala Buddhist ideas, and its language represents the worries of Sri Lanka’s majority community. So, it gets support from young Sinhala Buddhists in rural areas, in part by appealing to their dislike of the elite and imperialism.
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Are India on the JVP’s “hate list”?
After the protests in 2022, Dissanayake tried to build a broad anti-corruption alliance. However, the JVP’s difficult past with another major group makes its present and future less clear.
Indian meddling in Sri Lanka has been something the JVP has long been against. From the 1980s until 2009, the Tamil nationalist movement also tore the country apart. It was seen as related to India’s control over the country.
During the years 1987–1990, India sent troops to Sri Lanka to fight the Tamil rebels with the British. On a separate note, New Delhi persuaded Colombo to agree to what is called the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution. This change is meant to give some power to district governments.
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The JVP opposed the Tamil guerrilla movement because it wanted a separate country that would split Sri Lanka in two. This was true even though the JVP had used weapons against the government before. When Mahinda Rajapaksa was president of Sri Lanka in the 2000s, he crushed the Tamil rebel movement. The JVP backed the government at the time.
Dissanayake has said that he doesn’t feel bad about backing the Rajapaksa government’s war against the Tamil Tigers, the rebel group led by Tamil militants.
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Tamils in Sri Lanka and some people around the world have been asking for a long time for those responsible for claimed war crimes during the civil war to be brought to justice. Some of the things that are being blamed are murders that don’t follow the law, bombing of civilian targets like hospitals without reason, forced disappearances, mass killings of civilians, torture, sexual violence, and not giving relief aid.
National People’s Power, which is run by the JVP, has said that there will be no such probe. Dissanayake has said that the NPP will not try to punish people who are accused of violating human rights or committing war crimes. Instead, he has suggested making a way to find out what happened during the civil war, maybe like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
According to writer and observer Kusal Perera, the JVP is set on the idea of a “Unitary State” and doesn’t have a clear stance on the 13th Amendment.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution has not been fully put into place since it was passed in 1987. The amendment made it possible for police and land powers to be given to provincial councils, but no president has actually put it into action because they are afraid of political backlash from people who say it could allow Tamil separatists to make a separate state in the north.
If they win, the JVP promises to stop the Adani energy project
The Adani Group was going to put more than USD 440 million into the 20-year deal to build 484 megawatts of wind power in the area.
People who want Adani Green Energy to get the go-ahead have brought up worries about the environment and a lack of openness in the bidding process.
“Yes.” Dissanayake told the chat show, “We will definitely cancel it because it threatens our energy sovereignty.” He was reacting to questions about the huge fight over the project. The MoU between the Sri Lankan government and Adani Energy was made earlier this year. It has already got into some trouble, with a lot of complaints being sent to the Supreme Court of the country.
In the late 1980s, the Marxist-leaning JVP, which was known for its Sinhala nationalism, led a violent protest against India’s role in Sri Lanka’s racial crisis. The JVP was protesting against the deal between India and Sri Lanka, which led to the Indian government sending a peacekeeping force to the island to remove LTTE leaders and start a new round of killings.
Some people have also said that the agreed-upon rate of USD 0.0826 per kWh would hurt Sri Lanka’s finances and that the rate should be changed to YJ, which was USD 0.005 per kWh. The project’s future now depends on how the next election turns out.
India tried to get Dissanayake to come to New Delhi in January of this year, when he was becoming one of the main candidates for President.
People think that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE who was killed, planned to kill former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as a way to get back at him for sending the troops.
Dissanayake’s words are important because there have been rumors about what would happen to the project if Ranil Wickremesinghe lost the election on September 21. It was one of the most closely fought elections in recent memory.
The wrong things have been said about Adani’s power project in Sri Lanka over the past few years. In 2022, when the economy was bad, M. M. C. Ferdinando, who used to be head of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), told a Parliament Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) that the project was given to Adani because Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “put pressure” on Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
In June, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka said it would not allow the 484 MW wind power plant to be bought. And the company was taken to court in August. A three-person bench of the Supreme Court then told the respondents—the Sri Lankan government, the Board of Investment, and the Central Environmental Authority—to file their complaints.
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