By Vishwamithra –

“…’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

The much awaited miracle did happen. Anura Kumara Dissanayake is our new President. A new President, a new country and policies but the old fundamentals of politics that would never change purely because those fundamentals govern all human activities; that is why they are defined as fundamentals. However, the question which is reverberating amongst all who waited for this occasion is how credible an approach the new government would adopt and how soon the people could expect the said changes.

The nation responded peacefully to a change of hands; a change of leadership to a fresh beginning, a fresh approach and a fresh path indeed. Expectations are many and the avenues are a way too few. One cannot find fault with the enormity of expectations that the people are dreaming about. It’s not the day of the election that really matters. In a very powerful sense, it’s the day after, which we are all living now that matters. It’s not only the people who voted for the Mālimāwa who will have to be extremely patient, those who opted for another candidate, Ranil, Sajith or Namal, too must exercise exceptional patience. That patience in relation to ‘deliverance’, that patience which one does not understand if he or she had had not the privilege of starving while feeding their children, the privilege to have walked because his savings were for the children’s bus-fare to and from school.

Those momentous decisions are being made every day in our neighbors’ households. In the meanwhile, parliamentary elections have been scheduled for November 14. AKD did not make the mistake that Maithripala/Ranil combo made after their election victory on February 8, 2015. A natural sway of votes for a winning President and thereafter the parliamentary election did not happen. As a result, Ranil Wickremesinghe and the UNP could not dictate terms inside Parliament. Mahinda Rajapaksa after a humiliating defeat in the Presidential elections came back into politics. The change that the people hoped for, that they expected did not manifest itself; it proved to be an illusion.

Corruption, instead of being curbed and contained grew exponentially; insertion of corrupt Pohottuwa persona in the so-called ‘Yahapalanaya’ government via President Sirisena posed a challenge, a challenge that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe could not handle with any consequential finesse. The result was the emergence of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as a viable alternative, an alternative that promised a change. ‘Viyathmaga’, the vehicle that was created for the purpose of conveying Gotabhaya from a significant official, brother of the ex-President, to the throne of the country did its work. And they succeeded. Their success became the failure of the country.

Gotabaya turned out to be utterly incompetent, rigid and unfit for the highest office in the country. When the economic collapse gripped the nation’s throat, Gotabaya did not know how to deal with the public outcry that was a natural response of a suffering nation. His total political impotency was exposed to a hapless people. Lines started lengthening and the supermarket shelves became evidently  bare; the question of a country’s bankruptcy moved the fundamental dynamic of a once-stagnant economy which ultimately met its unkind end. We became a nation that could not afford to pay back our debts. A national humiliation became apparent.

Aragalaya-22 was painted into Sri Lanka’s political mosaic. The riotous picture that emerged revealed the glaring infertility of the system that prevailed up to the time. If those seventy six years could speak, what cascaded from its unfortunate lips was completely astonishing; its sounds and smells were absolutely nauseating. A pathetically let down nation appeared helpless and its masters looked the other way as they had been doing for nearly eight decades.

When the Aragalaya-22 reached a peak, many a politician tried to visit the ground and they, including Sajith Premadasa, were chased away. Only two politicians of national stature, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the NPP and Sarath Fonseka were tolerated.

Although AKD was acknowledged as a national level political leader, at the time of the beginning of the Aragalaya-22, his party, the old JVP, enjoyed a meager 3.6% of the voting population. His organization had not reached even an ordinary level of success at the polls one after another, since 1982.  In 2024, in merely two and half years, AKD’s Party the National People’s Power NPP, that enjoyed only a meager 3.6% increased it to 43%, catapulting its leader, AKD, to the highest office in the country and it was achieved by the ballot.

A man who did that, turning an insubstantial 3.6% to an astounding 43%, is no ordinary man. SWRD Bandaranaike, after departing from the UNP in 1951, contested the 1952 General Elections and received 15.5%. Then converted that 15.5% into a winning the 1956 General Election with a  39.5% plurality votes, reducing the UNP to a mere 8 seats in Parliament. The ’56 transformation was, at the time, considered an electoral clobbering. AKD outperformed Bandaranaike. Ousting of Ranil Wickremesinghe from Presidency and humiliating Sajith Premadasa to a devastating defeat is indeed a massive electoral victory. Don’t ever underestimate such a momentous feat.

Trying to teach Anura Kumara Dissanayake how to run the new government is annoying at best and utterly redundant in the least. Ever since the birth of the Aragalaya-22, the National People’s Power and its top leadership headed by AKD have been working around the clock, not only prepping for the election, they were also busy drawing blueprints for the smooth and efficient management of the country’s sociopolitical and financial life for the next decade. It is, in fact, not too much to ask AKD and the NPP to be extra careful and vigilant in their endeavors to resolve our burning issues, but to tell them what policies to adopt and what’s to be rejected is absolutely condescending.

However, critiquing their x, y and z proposals is entirely up to the mainstream and social media provided it is done within the accepted boundaries of decency and fairness. Should we decide to do otherwise would be an abdication of our responsibility. Don’t forget the first few months after the election of Maithripala/Ranil combo into power in 2015; the whole country was euphoric in the ouster of the Rajapaksas from power; exposing the Rajapaksa skeletons in their own cupboards, display of luxury vehicles on the Presidential Secretariat grounds, opening up the bunkers of the Presidential House etc. too attracted many a journalist and many a curious member of the public. But where did it take us: to a much worse place, to a much more horrible rule of another Rajapaksa sibling and the eventual bankruptcy of the country.

But AKD is different. His commitment seems much deeper and more intellectually enlightening. He is devoid, at least in the first few days, of any doctrinaire baggage. And he did not hesitate to dissolve Parliament immediately upon being sworn-in as President. He did not give his supporters or his adversaries to either celebrate of going on a sulking trip. As a matter of political strategy, AKD is engaged on all gears, from top to the 1st, except the reverse.

With the geopolitical scenario occupying his mind, AKD as a statesman will be tested now. His acumen as a strategic thinker and a practical leader of men and a nation will be scrutinized by every journalist, every geopolitical scholar, every university academic and every regional leader. This is where his skills and aptitude in statecraft would be severely tested and tried. Every armchair critic questioned his experience and knowledge in such profound realms; everyone wanted to know where he would fail and where he would do well. Now that’s all in the in past, immediate or distant.

His only focus and his only commitment now must be to secure enough number of parliamentary seats so that he has a working majority. Let Sajith hallucinate about becoming Prime Minister. He is quite capable of enjoying such creations of his own fantasies. Sajith ran a horrible election campaign. His infatuations with his own weak and small self has taken him where he is now. Surrounded by half-baked strategists, buttressed by his own kith and kin, Sajith is in the process of destroying his own Party, Samagi Jana Balavegaya. The people at large thought that the SJB is a political party like the UNP with traditional structures and traditional lines of command and conventional flow of power. It is not. SJB is Sajith’s Party. What Sajith thinks and what he ponders about is the Party. Whatever the residue that is attaching itself to the SJB from the old UNP is without a political entity, which they can identify as a political party with solid structural foundations. Ranil destroyed all those structures and Sajith is doing that to his own Party.

The beneficiary of all these political malpractices by the Ranil/Sajith duo is Anura Kumara Dissanayake. I am not advising AKD; but I certainly can make a profound observation: don’t take your eyes off the target. You may not reach it in the prescribed time. But the steps you have gained are good, and what other few steps to be taken is entirely up to you and only you.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com