Sri Lanka’s new leftist leader has drawn strong support from an unlikely source as he seeks to expand his three parliamentary seats to a house majority in elections on Thursday.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, 55, who counts Karl Marx and Che Guevara among his heroes, has the backing of the country’s largest and most influential private sector trade and industry body.
Dissanayake took power in September on the back of public anger over the island’s 2022 economic meltdown — and the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) has said its proposals for economic recovery match the socialist agenda of his People’s Liberation Front (JVP).
Business leaders have speculated the country could follow the economic models of China or Vietnam under Dissanayake, whose party sports the hammer and sickle motif of the international communist movement in its logo.
“In the first term (of Dissanayake), I would say that they will be far better than Vietnam in terms of having a full democratic setup”, said Imran Furkan, from the Australia-based geopolitical risk analysis firm Tresync.
“Democracy is deeply rooted in Sri Lanka, unlike in Vietnam, which has been communist for a long time”.
Furkan said he expected Dissanayake’s party to comfortably win Thursday’s parliamentary elections and then pursue reforms, including unpopular austerity measures begun by his right-wing predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe in line with a $2.9 billion IMF bailout.
