Publications by Fellows: Devaka Gunawardena, Ahilan Kadirgamar: The Sri Lankan Left’s Long Road to Power
A paper on the left-wing parties in Sri Lanka, co-authored by our Fellow Devaka Gunawardena and Ahilan Kadirgamar, has been published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Berlin.
The paper focuses on a major shift in politics in Sri Lanka: following the victory of the National People’s Power (NPP) candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in the Sri Lankan presidential election last September, the NPP also won the parliamentary elections in November 2024 with a landslide. “For the first time since the 1970s, a left-wing party is not only participating in a government coalition, but leading it,” the authors write, adding “This uncharted political territory represents a great opportunity to put Sri Lanka on a more sustainable, egalitarian developmental path, but also poses great risks.”
The article puts the NPP victory in context by looking at the history of the left in Sri Lanka from its beginnings in 1935. According to the authors, “Critical engagement with the party’s history is necessary to explore if and how the NPP can be pushed to the left,” as it is uncertain whether Sri Lanka’s new government will be willing to take steps towards an independent development path, which would require a break with neoliberalism.
Sri Lanka’s neoliberal economy, based on tourism and remittances from migrant workers, is highly vulnerable to external challenges, as the COVId-19 pandemic clearly showed. Unless the government wants to become an example “of the obsolete centre-left establishment that has enforced austerity in country after country,” the authors warn, “the Left must develop a vision that prioritizes social mobilization and transforming the relations of production, as much as it does legal reforms and changes to the structures of governance.”
Read the essay here.
