Since Monday, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, 55, has been the new president of the island state of Sri Lanka, and no description of the man fails to mention that he is a Marxist. But what does that mean in a country that was driven to ruin by family clans that had previously alternated in power for decades? Dissanayake, who is known in Sri Lanka only as AKD, promised during the election campaign to crack down on corruption and to stand up for the poor. In the 2019 presidential election, only three percent of eligible voters trusted him; this time he received more than 42 percent of the vote because he stands for radical change and because people no longer trust the old political elites. A pattern that is currently also known from the USA and Europe.
But unlike the disruptive forces in the West, AKD is a politician who is not so much concerned about himself as he is about the country and its people. “I promise that I will work to protect and maintain democracy,” he said on Monday at his inauguration. “Our politics must become cleaner, and people have called for a different political culture.” In the past, his party, the “Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna” (JVP), had advocated an economic policy that intervened heavily in the market. That would be an intervention in the spirit of Karl Marx, who linked the conflict between social classes to economic inequality. In Sri Lanka, where the feudal rulers mainly lined their own pockets while a quarter of the population lived below the poverty line, that would be a clear improvement in conditions.
The island state is in debt to India and China
Sri Lanka could be rich, it has natural resources, is strategically located on the Bay of Bengal and attracts many tourists. Many women and men in the country speak English, a legacy of British colonial rule, and everyone in the country could benefit economically from this. Before the classless restructuring can take place, however, AKD must first form a cabinet, which is not easy, as his JVP only won three of 225 seats. But the man is considered a good organizer and assertive. He comes from a humble background, but made it to university. Once his government is in place, a budget must be passed quickly so that the next tranche of the 2.9 billion US dollar rescue package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which his predecessor negotiated, can be released.
International investors fear that AKD’s desire to reconsider the terms of the IMF package could delay disbursements and slow economic development. In addition, Sri Lanka is still in debt to the major powers India and China, which want to expand their influence in the small but strategically important country. Sri Lanka is a building block of Beijing’s “Belt & Road” initiative, and the port of Hambantota in the south practically already belongs to Beijing, a deal dating back to the time of the old feudal lords in Colombo. Communist China, Sri Lanka’s largest creditor, is behaving in a rather turbo-capitalist manner when it comes to loan repayments: “China hopes that Sri Lanka will maintain its national stability and development, and is ready to play a constructive role in the smooth economic and social development,” said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday. That does not sound like a willingness to negotiate. But while AKD has to reach an agreement with Beijing, Delhi and the IMF, the hopes of the country’s poor are resting on it. He had promised them tax cuts, among other things. How expensive fruit and vegetables become on the markets is therefore at least as much an indicator of his success as the amount of interest repayments to international lenders.