New leader’s promises will be tricky to keep in hard-up Sri Lanka

The political landscape in Sri Lanka has been transformed by magnificent election victories by a fresh left-leaning president and his party, but the island’s fresh rulers are realizing that campaign promises are simpler to make than to keep.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s remarkable victory in the presidential election in September was swiftly followed by a landslide for his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance in parliamentary elections.

He and his supporters want the country’s attempt to recover from a disastrous economic problems and years of mismanagement as the new year approaches.

However, they only have a limited amount of room to maneuver in order to fulfill promises made to voters, whose expectations for the new government are higher.

Sri Lanka is not far from the trees, and the financial recovery has been unstable since the economic collapse of 2022.

In November, the NPP won 159 votes in the 225-member assembly, giving Dissanayake a broad authority to pass significant economic and constitutional changes.

The new president had to get ready for a meeting with a visiting delegation from the International Monetary Fund ( IMF), with whom the departed government had negotiated a$ 2.9 billion ( £2.31 billion ) bailout package, even as the results were being released.

The IMF deal became contentious because it severed austerity measures, income increases, and electricity subsidies were implemented, severely hurting the common people.

Dissanayake and his group promised to re-negotiate elements of the IMF deal during the promotion.

But in his address to the new legislature, he performed a U-turn.

” The market is in such a condition that it cannot take the slightest jolt… There’s no room to make errors”, Dissanayake said.

” This is not the time to talk about whether the IMF loan’s conditions are favorable or negative, or whether the deal favors us or not,” he said. We don’t start over from scratch, and the operation had taken about two centuries.

The voters’ overwhelming verdict for the NPP is seen as the culmination of a people’s uprising triggered by the economic crisis. The uprising toppled president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the summer of 2022, when Sri Lanka ran out of foreign currency and struggled to import food and fuel.

The nation had previously declared bankruptcy after defaulting on about$ 46 billion in additional debt. Among the countries that have approved billions of dollars are India, China, and Japan.

The latest election results also showed how angry people are with proven political parties led by former presidents Ranil Wickremesinghe and others because they failed to deal with the global economic crisis.

” Due to the excessive tax and the cost-of-living problems, one of Dissanayake’s top priorities is to provide some financial relief to the people.” Another significant challenge is debt management, according to senior political analyst Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda to the BBC.

So far the huge social shifts don’t seem to have had any impact on people like Niluka Dilrukshi, a mother-of-four who lives in a neighborhood of the money Colombo. The home still struggles to get by because her husband works on a daily basis.

The BBC spoke to her about the soaring cost of living in January 2022, months before mass protests erupted.

She claimed that because of the high cost of fish and meat, her family was simply giving their children vegetables and rice and only two meals per day instead of three.

Everything has changed, despite our ongoing struggles to make ends meet. The price of corn, which is the cornerstone food, has increased more. We are not getting any pleasure from the state”, Mrs Dilrukshi says.

Folks like her like the new government to take immediate action to lower the price of essential goods. Sri Lanka is an import-dependent society, and it needs foreign money to bring in items like food and medicine.

Colombo is allowed to hold on to its dollar reserves for the time being because it has suspended its loan repayments.

According to researchers, the real battle will begin when it begins to pay its debts in the next three or four years.

If there isn’t a noticeable change in person’s standard of living in the next two or three years, the notion of President Dissanayake and his new state may change.

” People have given him a huge authority. The IMF does regard that by allowing him to alleviate some suffering through social welfare programs, according to Prof. Uyangoda.

Dissanayake also has to argue with China and India, both of which are battling for dominance in Sri Lanka, where both have made significant investments in recent years.

” Both China and India did make an effort to provide Colombo under their purview.” I think the new government’s foreign plan will be very rational without aligning with anyone”, says Prof Uyangoda.

In a cautious political move, Dissanayake chose Delhi as his first official overseas place in mid-December. India made promises during the visit to provide Sri Lankan strength plants with liquefied natural gas and to work toward long-term connections between the two nations ‘ power grid.

China’s increasing foothold in Sri Lanka, specifically calls by Taiwanese “research” vessels to the island’s ports- so near to India’s southwestern tip- has induced concern in Delhi.

After speaking with Narendra Modi, Dissanayake told the prime minister of India that he would not let our area to be used in any way in a way that would harm India’s interests.

Delhi will undoubtedly be pleased with the assurance, but Dissanayake may learn what Beijing anticipates when he travels to China in the middle of January.