New Delhi: Amid a series of political and economic ups and downs, Sri Lanka will vote for its new President later this month in an election that will be closely watched by not just India but also China and the western world.
A record 39 candidates are in the fray for the polls scheduled for 21 September with no clear frontrunners yet.
India’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval’s visit to Sri Lanka last week assumes particular importance in light of strategic interests India has in Sri Lanka.
While Doval was there for the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), he also held a meeting with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe. The 75-year-old is running for re-election as an independent candidate.
Doval also met three other leading candidates—Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB)’s 57-year-old leader Sajith Premadasa; Leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake; and 38-year-old Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna candidate, Namal Rajapaksa, the latest entrant to the race.
Another key contender is Nuwan Bopage, who has been chosen as the Presidential candidate by the People’s Struggle Alliance, a group formed by the Aragalaya activists.
This will be the first elections in Sri Lanka since the unprecedented economic crisis in 2022 that led to massive protests that forced former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of power.
Notably, while 56 percent of the electorate are reportedly women, all candidates are men. The election is critical for the country with approximately 17.1 million eligible voters, including a million first-time voters.
In an opinion piece for the New Indian Express, Dilrukshi Handunnetti, founder and director of the Colombo-based Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), writes that the next president stands to inherit a “thorny crown and will not have things easy”.
“Voters have a key role to play, not only in selecting the next president, but demanding accountability from him, demanding policy statements that are not figments of imaginations but are truly actionable,” he writes.
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Why Sri Lanka elections matter for India
Sri Lanka, an island off India’s southern coast, is not only among India’s nearest neighbours, but also among the closest.
Its location makes it a key player in India’s Neighborhood First policy and Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), India’s strategic vision for the Indian Ocean—particularly amid expanding Chinese influence.
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR), which facilitates the transportation of over 70 percent of the world’s maritime trade and 50 percent of its daily oil consumption, is of geostrategic, geopolitical and geo-economic importance for India. For that reason, the election will be watched closely in New Delhi.
This also comes at a time when Sri Lanka has banned Chinese research vessels from entering and operating at its ports for one year after India raised strategic concerns to Colombo. The moratorium will expire in January next year.
Doval’s meetings in Sri Lanka, however, showed that, unlike with Bangladesh, where India was criticised for its unwavering support for Hasina, New Delhi has taken a more measured approach towards its ties with the Sri Lankan leadership.
In February, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held talks with Dissanayake, who is also the leader of the JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, in New Delhi.
Historically, the JVP has opposed close ties with India, viewing it as an expansionist power.
This was the first time a leader of the JVP was invited to India, which is seeing a surge in popularity given the disillusionment with the current main political leadership. This is also important because Sri Lanka is set to hold parliamentary elections sometime next year.
“The sheer uncertainty of the country’s political direction had pushed India to engage across the party lines… And I think India is bracing itself for the elections, exploring options to work with any government that comes to power,” Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, an associate fellow with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) told ThePrint.
“What we are seeing in India today is its ability to work with leaders and parties who have not been India-friendly. With Bangladesh as an exemption, the Maldives and Nepal serve as the best example of this flexible approach,” he added.
The JVP was also a willing participant in the outreach. Dr Smruti S. Pattanaik, a Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, attributed this to Sri Lanka’s economic condition.
“It is not just India engaging the JVP, the JVP also engaged India because it didn’t want to be known as the anti-India party. They know, the situation which Sri Lanka is in, they would require support from all kinds of countries…So as far as India is concerned there’s a kind of mutual dependency,” she told ThePrint.
India, China and the West look towards Sri Lanka
While the current administration has been able to arrest a falling economy to a large extent, multiple countries have come together to help, among these countries is India.
In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on a debt of $83 billion, with more than half of it owed to foreign investors.
India provided $4 billion of aid to Sri Lanka that year, when it was the height of its financial crisis. Its debt to India stands at $1.74 billion. Sri Lanka owes China, its biggest bilateral creditor, $4.7 billion and Chinese companies have been involved in several infrastructure projects in the country.
“Everybody has a stake in Sri Lanka’s economy now because of the kind of money they have invested. So, unless and until its economy is back on track, it will also be a loss for China,” said Dr Pattanaik.
“So, they [China] will be watching who is coming to power in the next election and how they will pursue their own interests in Sri Lanka. They would not want any party which is friendly with India and the US. But at this time, Sri Lankan economy is in such dire straits that any party that comes to power will not be able to play one country against another, rather they will have to engage everyone.”
Under Wickremesinghe, inflation has come down from 2022’s peak of over 70 percent to 2.4 percent in June, according to the Central bank of Sri Lanka.
The economy is also showing signs of stabilisation. The elections are also key to a critical debt restructuring programme.
However, people are unhappy with the austerity measures that the government has imposed. Furthermore, there is large-scale political fragmentation.
“The only fragmentation that has not happened is in the NPP,” said Dr Pattanaik. “But if you look at the past, they have always been a distant third. So, it’s difficult to say who is going to come to power.”
“But whoever comes to power, the hope is that they engage all the stakeholders in the Sri Lankan economy, including India. This is not the time for a strategy where you can alienate India,” she added.
Shivamurthy is of similar view.
“There is uncertainty in the election outcome. Given the way things have changed in the last years. There is little to do, but to wait and work with whoever comes to power,” he said.
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