On Sept. 21, Sri Lanka will hold its first presidential election since the July 2022 popular uprising known as the Aragalaya, which drove then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from power. In the two years since then, Rajapaksa’s successor, current President Ranil Wickremesinghe, has managed to enact some policy reforms that unlocked much-needed relief from the International Monetary Fund, allowing the country to regain some political and economic stability.
Nevertheless, recent polls suggest that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a longtime opposition figure and leader of the People’s Liberation Front, or JVP, is set to be the frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election. Traditionally a Marxist-Leninist party, the JVP has evolved from a fringe faction known for its revolutionary past into a prominent anti-establishment force. It is now the leading formation in the National People’s Power, or NPP, political alliance, which itself has surged in Sri Lanka’s post-Aragalaya political scene. What explains Dissanayake’s rise, and what does his ascent signal for Sri Lanka’s foreign policy orientation?
The NPP’s Post-Aragalaya Ascendance
The JVP is notorious for its history of violent political insurgency. Established in the 1960s as a Marxist-Leninist party, it led armed uprisings against the Sri Lankan government in the early 1970s and late 1980s, before transitioning into a viable electoral party in the mid-1990s. It gained prominence in the early 2000s as the principal political force opposing the Norwegian-mediated peace process between the then-government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE.