New Lankan president: A curveball India prepared for; Anura Kumara Dissanayake against Adani project but backs Indian security

NEW DELHI: With Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake winning the hotly contested Sri Lankan presidential poll, India is faced with another challenge in the neighbourhood of dealing with a leader who remains a relatively unknown quantity. However, with its $ 4 billion-worth assistance that helped Lanka tide over an unprecedented economic crisis and recent outreach that had the Indian government hosting him earlier this year, India is perhaps in a lot better position to absorb the shock than it was in Bangladesh.
India’s high commissioner Santosh Jha was the first diplomat to call on the president-elect and congratulate him, saying India, as a civilisational twin, was committed to deepening ties for the prosperity of the people of both countries.
Read also: Anura Dissanayake elected new Sri Lanka president, What is his stance on India?
After his swearing-in on Monday, the 55-year-old National People’s Power alliance leader will become the first Leftist president to head a Lankan government. A marginal player till now in Lankan politics, who got only 3 percent votes in the last election, Dissanayake defeated the pro-India leader of opposition, Sajith Premadasa, after a historic counting of second preference votes, as no candidate could get more than 50 percent votes. He eventually won with 42.31 percent votes.
While India followed the elections with a non-partisan approach, it would have ideally liked incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe or Premadasa to win for the sake of continuity, if nothing else. This would have allowed a more sure-footed Indian government to build upon the goodwill generated by its recent handholding of the strategically important Indian Ocean neighbour through a period of acute crisis.
Despite the traditionally anti-India stance of his Marxist- Leninist party JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna), the Indian government reached out to Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, in February inviting him to visit the country. The invitation acknowledged his increasing popularity, especially among the youth, on the back of widespread anger over the mishandling of the crisis and a pro-poor, anti-corruption “agent of change’’ image that proved decisive in an election dominated by issues related to Sri Lanka’s economic recovery. These included a controversial IMF bailout deal he wants renegotiated. Both foreign minister S Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval met him in Delhi.
Interestingly, during his visit to India, Dissanayake agreed to visit the Amul plant in Gujarat after alleging that the Indian dairy giant was planning to take over dozens of Lankan state owned dairies.
The Indian mission in Colombo has remained in regular contact with Dissanayake.
For India, the key priorities in Sri Lanka remain the need to address the requirements of the India-origin Tamil community, including full implementation of the 1987 13th Amendment to the Constitution, expediting connectivity, energy and other projects as China expands its footprint and a more humanitarian approach towards Indian fishermen. It’s also important for India that Sri Lanka, in line with a bilateral agreement, doesn’t allow China military use of its ports in a manner prejudicial to India’s interests.
While many have speculated that Dissanayake might seek stronger ties with China, it’s important for India that he said recently he won’t allow anyone to use his country’s sea, land and airspace to threaten India.
The socialist leader made headlines recently by saying he will scrap a wind power project by the Adani group, which has run into problems because of environmental issues, saying it violates Sri Lanka’s “energy sovereignty”. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, which promotes cross-border trade and investment, is said to have emphasised before Dissanayake that the project might help attract more investments into the country.
Dissanayake is also learnt to have expressed concerns before Indian officials about corruption and lack of transparency in the execution of some of Chinese flagship projects, like the Hambantota port and Colombo port city project. India believes that while he might look to remodel some of the projects, it’s unlikely he will revoke any. “His focus on corruption and the need for transparency is in line with India’s stand against opaque lending practices. Indian projects are based on the needs of the local people,’’ said an official here.
Dissanayake has sounded ambivalent about the 13th Amendment and his party has strongly opposed the 1987 India-Sri Lanka accord but, barring Premadasa, no other major candidate, not even Wickremesinghe, had promised its full implementation. While seeking Constitutional changes, Dissanayake has said it’s important to implement provisions that can establish peace and to focus on the future, not the past. ``To do that, Tamil people should be given a strong guarantee of rights in politics. They must be given a right to make decisions for themselves,’’ he said earlier this year.