AKD is the only minority President we’ve had, winning just 42% in the first round, two years ago. Germany’s Alt-Right AfD won Saxony with 44% which is not yet considered a majority. AKD’s win and the subsequent JVP-NPP landslide two years ago stemmed from two sources.
Confusing as usual a competitive political party with a conservative economists’ association, the SJB’s Dr. Harsha de Silva and Eran Wickremaratne undermined Sajith Premadasa’s Presidential run by endorsing and identifying the party with President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s unprecedentedly and excessively harsh austerity program at a time of a rising anti-incumbency wave.
Equally crucial was the swing of the pro-Mahinda vote, via the Gotabaya detour/deviation and crashed expectations, to AKD-JVP-NPP, because Sajith and the SJB were positioned too far in right field (unlike Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1988) to intercept and attract that vote. Moreover, the ex-SLFP/SLPP voters were accustomed to the JVP as an occasional ally and the JVP had smartly presented an acceptable left-populism in the form of the NPP Trojan Horse.
Namal has been caged on AKD’s watch. His father Mahinda Rajapaksa had been framed as a young parliamentarian for murder and jailed by the Jayewardene Government in 1985. His mother died while Mahinda was behind bars. That moment crystallised the public perception of MR as the charismatic, archetypal Southern hero subjected to politically-motivated injustice and incarceration by the rulers.
The return of ex-SLPP voters from AKD-JVP-NPP back to Namal won’t be halted by his incarceration however long, this time or next, but has gathered the added motivation and momentum of a backlash. Those decisive numbers are subtracted from AKD-JVP-NPP for good.
Even if jailed, Namal Rajapaksa, Mahinda’s son, is too popular and rapidly growing a figure for AKD-JVP-NPP to persecute without crippling sociopolitical shrinkage in the heartland. The politico-electoral price will far exceed the gain.
Without an electoral leg to stand on-except perhaps the minorities-the ruling bloc is busily loading the legal-electoral dice or if you prefer, making a fairly level playing field as steeply asymmetrical as possible.
Anura’s Bulathsinhala speech which kicks off his 2nd anniversary tour reeked of aggressive, smug self-satisfaction. There was no regret about shortcomings or harsh economic decisions; no self-criticism. He gave himself and his Government full marks. His main listed achievement was the war against ‘black money’ and the ‘black State’. The rest were development promises (’50 vocational universities’), their credibility devalued by his developmental track record, or lack of it, so far.
What is the actuality? A respecd columnist has spotlighted the curretent social reality:
‘…This year, Sri Lanka regained upper-middle income status, an achievement the Government celebrated, justly, while staying mum on a related fact. According to the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) measurement used for upper-middle income countries (with poverty line set at $ 8.3 – Rs. 2,724 – per day), Sri Lanka’s poverty rate for 2026 would be a mind-boggling 65.4%. In other words, Sri Lanka is an upper-middle income country with almost two-thirds of its population living in poverty!
…According to World Bank calculations, by 2028, our poverty rate will go down only very marginally to 63.4%.’
The pauperisation of the populace, of society, is the material reality, the truth on the ground; the dominant and determinant dynamic.
Coinciding with AKD’s 2nd anniversary in office, the JVP-NPP was eliminated at the election to the country’s largest cooperative society of tea producers, in Morawakkorale, Matara district in the Deep South. The SJB with 5 seats led the victorious combined Opposition.
Military hardware: From China to NATO?
In the month of the second anniversary of the AKD-led JVP-NPP administration, Sri Lanka has just taken a step into a deadly minefield that no previous administration was irresponsibly foolish enough to stray into.
Sri Lanka’s national interest was badly hurt in the 1980s when it lurched in the direction of the West, forgetting where we were located and naturally belonged. Even then, Sri Lanka only flirted with the West, not seek to become its South Asian satellite and (inevitably) pawn in the military-strategic contestation.
The recent shocking deviation was not by an irresponsible Minister or one with a dodgy knowledge of English. Sadly, it was by Secretary of Defence, an intelligent man with an impressive combat record, social civility and total fluency in English. He reports to none other than his Minister, who is none lesser than President AKD.
The Defence Ministry statement leaves no room for ambiguity in its operative opening and closing paragraphs:
‘Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha (retd) held a bilateral discussion with the Chief of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, on 31 August (2026) on the sidelines of the Chiefs of Defence Conference in Victoria, Canada.
…The Defence Secretary invited NATO to further enhance engagement and cooperation with Sri Lanka emphasising the importance of sustained dialogue, information sharing and practical cooperation in areas of mutual interest.’
‘…the Defence Secretary outlined Sri Lanka’s defence requirements and areas of interest, including the modernisation of military hardware, acquisition of advanced technologies, and strengthening cyber capabilities and surveillance platforms as well as opportunities for greater cooperation’.
‘The discussion also focused on strengthening cooperation through the exchange of military personnel, expanded military education and training programs, and enhanced sharing of expertise and information. The Defence Secretary further highlighted the opportunities for cooperation in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), including the exchange of expertise and effective use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in disaster response and related operations.’ (ibid)
This is clearly an effort on the part of the AKD-JVP-NPP Government to enter a broad-spectrum military relationship with NATO.
One hopes the reference in the MoD statement that ‘the Defence Secretary outlined Sri Lanka’s defence requirements and areas of interest, including the modernisation of military hardware…’ does not mean a switch of ‘military hardware’ and procurement sources for ‘defence requirements’, away from our reliable friend China, to any Western source – because those sources are likely to cut us off as they once did due to Congressional legislation (the Leahy Amendment).
Future pressure from the Tamil Diaspora could make us utterly vulnerable to Western weapons embargos while no such strangulation would ever occur at the hands of China.
If we become dependent on Western sources for ‘defence requirements’ including ‘military hardware’, we shall have to follow their lead in many other matters for fear of cut-off.
A nation’s sources of basic security – weaponry – must be securely ring-fenced. Under AKD-JVP-NPP they won’t be.
Even if jailed, Namal Rajapaksa, Mahinda’s son, is too popular and rapidly growing a figure for AKD-JVP-NPP to persecute without crippling sociopolitical shrinkage in the heartland. The politico-electoral price will far exceed the gain. Without an electoral leg to stand on-except perhaps the minorities-the ruling bloc is busily loading the legal-electoral dice or if you prefer, making a fairly level playing field as steeply asymmetrical as possible
AKD: Autonomy to alignment
While the blunders of previous governments since Independence are enough to make us cry when we think of what we might have been and the chances we lost, our post-Independence leadership did not take our country to defeat and destruction. We could have ended like former Yugoslavia or Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia/Eritrea; Pinochet’s Chile, Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, or Myanmar/Burma.
We didn’t because our post-Independence leaders didn’t go beyond certain paradigmatic parameters in the blunders they made, and also because multi-party electoral democracy always yielded a new leader capable of doing what his/her less successful predecessor failed to; building on the inherited achievement and completing the task, changing course when rectification was manifestly needed.
Whatever the ideological proclivity of our post-1948 governments, and whatever bilateral relations they entered in terms of securing military assistance, they steered well clear of association, affinity or alignment with strategic military blocs. They always tried to avoid such entanglements and inhabit an autonomous space internationally.
At the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961, Ceylon represented by Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a founder.
The doctrine on Non-Alignment famously stated the determination to steer clear of ‘military blocs conceived in a Cold War context’. What the founding doctrine of Non-Alignment stood for was non-involvement in or with military blocs conceived in the context of superpower or great power rivalry.
Though one Cold War is over, there are obviously one or more New Cold Wars, between the US and China, and UK/EU/NATO propelling Ukraine against Russia.
NATO need not have existed after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed. Instead, it celebrated its 50th anniversary by intervening in Yugoslavia’s civil war and bombing that country out of existence. It then proceeded to violate all promises to the contrary given to Russia and expanded in Russia’s direction, with Washington’s Victoria Nuland pushing through violent regime change in Ukraine in 2014, thereby triggering the Crimea war and later the Ukraine war of pre-emptive self-defence by Russia. NATO is now fully embedded and engaged in Ukraine in the war to defeat, perhaps dismember, Russia.
Germany and Japan have been permitted an unprecedentedly aggressive postwar leap in militarisation by the West. If the Far Right AfD eventually governs this remilitarised Germany, Hitler’s spectre would smile.
Though EU-US differences exist on which should be the priority as a threat, Russia or China, the lusty British and European applause that met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s surreal call at the 2026 Munich Security Summit for a return to the 500 years of Western civilisation’s dominance of the world, shows that the collective West spearheaded by the US-led NATO will be one of the prongs of the grand-strategic encirclement of China.
Beijing may or may not aspire to lead the world eventually, ‘arriving at the centre of the world stage’ as some authoritative Chinese writings put it, but it is not making any kind of grab for it, still less building a military bloc. But the West is unwilling to recognise China even as a co-leader of the world, sharing the centre of the world stage, in consonance with its economic power.
This is where Sri Lanka must draw parametric ‘red lines’ for itself. As a strategically located island in the strategic Indian Ocean/Indo-Pacific, it must not allow itself to be used in any way by any military bloc adversarial towards China in particular, and China-Russia-Eurasia in general. Under AKD however, Sri Lanka is beckoning the most predatory military bloc in history; soliciting a relationship and web of inputs. Our traditional friends China, Russia, India and Pakistan will raise their eyebrows over this unseemly out-of-area leap by Sri Lanka.
The lunge towards NATO by the AKD administration should remove any ambivalence about the character of the present Government.
This is not a Government of the left or of a left-leaning disposition, which has a problematic domestic economic policy but a progressive foreign policy. This is not an issue of Anura’s Government deviating from or abandoning Non-Alignment in favour of neutrality. This is AKD’s Ministry and his Govt abandoning both Non-Alignment and neutrality in favour of alignment with the West’s aggressive war machine, NATO.
To make matters worse, the Jerusalem Post reveals that the AKD Government is seeking to expand ties-including in the defence realm-with Israel. This while Israel is waging a genocidal war in Gaza and has invaded Lebanon, and Sri Lanka has a significant Muslim minority.
‘…there is evidence of Sri Lankan interest in expanding relations with Israel. In August 2026, Sri Lanka’s new Ambassador to Israel identified agricultural technology, defence, and trade as areas in which Colombo would like to deepen cooperation.’
(https://share.google/rBJ0LkhRUHLCIT8Vk)
From the Foreign Ministry (our new Ambassador Saman Kumar Chandrasiri) through the Tourism Deputy Minister who held that the fundamentalist-Zionist Chabad houses pose no problems, to the Defence Ministry under the President which openly solicits multiple entanglements with NATO, the external relations of this Government make it the most pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, right-wing, reactionary administration since Independence.
Clearly Anura Dissanayake and the JVP-NPP have been abysmal failures in meeting the ‘social’ in social democracy. I know of no ‘social democratic’ or ‘left-populist’ Presidency anywhere in the world which has such an abysmal track record of ‘almost two-thirds of its population living in poverty’
Lionel’s lies: Neither social nor democratic
Lionel Bopage, JVP veteran of 1971 vintage, told two English-language newspapers in extended interviews (one being the Daily FT) that the JVP-NPP administration is ‘social democratic’; striving to put into practice ‘social democratic’ policies. This is a nonsensical falsehood. Neither AKD nor JVP nor NPP have ever once called themselves ‘social democratic’. In Bulathsinhala, Anura reiterated that his Government’s self-definition as ‘pro-people’ or ‘populist’ (‘janathavaadee’). There is nothing ‘social’ or ‘democratic’ about them. Quite the contrary.
Clearly Anura Dissanayake and the JVP-NPP have been abysmal failures in meeting the ‘social’ in social democracy. I know of no ‘social democratic’ or ‘left-populist’ Presidency anywhere in the world which has such an abysmal track record of ‘almost two-thirds of its population living in poverty’. (https://www.ft.lk/columns/Sri-Lanka-beyond-22/4-796680) Lula’s first administration kicked off with a Zero Hunger program. Developmental populist President Premadasa’s lead project was the poverty alleviation program Janasaviya.
As for ‘democracy’, the JVP-NPP has deliberately delayed the holding of the Provincial Council elections which haven’t been held for almost a decade.
Anura is doing to competitive multiparty liberal democracy what Kashyapa of Sigiriya did to his father King Dhatusena whom he walled-up alive-bricking it up, law by draconian law passed by his steamroller Parliamentary majority until it suffocates.
Since Anura is doing far worse in both foreign and domestic policy, going further in the wrong direction than all his predecessors, negatively affecting the national interest and the socioeconomic majority more than the post-Independence administrations as a whole, the AKD-JVP-NPP ruling bloc cannot rationally be regarded ‘more progressive’ than those predecessors who now comprise the mainstream Opposition.
Logically it cannot even be regarded as the equivalent of those parties and leaders. Anura and his JVP-NPP Government is objectively far worse, more right-wing in its policy and practice than any predecessor or consequential competitor.
The AKD-JVP-NPP ruling bloc cannot but be the entity with which the ‘principal contradiction’ is.
Since AKD serves the big comprador bourgeoisie and its dominance in more direct and blatant a manner than any previous Lankan leader, and is willing to hook up in the military/defense domain with NATO and Zionist Israel, the contradiction with Anura’s rule is necessarily an ‘antagonism’ or ‘antagonistic contradiction’.
As the second anniversary dawns, for any authentic leftist, progressive, patriot or democrat, AKD-JVP-NPP rule cannot but constitute ‘the main enemy’.
At the 1977 General Election, the entire left which had held office was wiped out. The failure of the mainstream Lankan left to produce the equivalent of India’s independent-minded CPI-M deprived the voters of any democratic left alternative.
Today’s JVP-NPP Government has no dissident faction to survive the crash. The FSP-PSA and the CPSL could, in consonance, constitute a left alternative if they correctly recognise ‘the main enemy’ – the ruling bloc-and consistently act on it.