Opinion by Mathew Carr
Sept. 23-24, 2024 — Sri Lanka has replaced its leader peacefully, shifting away from an IMF/American system of reckless capitalism alongside austerity for the middle and lower classes.
The new leader Anura Dissanayake got 5.7 million votes including preferences, versus 4.5 million for his nearest rival Sajith Premadasa. See chart below.
The incumbent Ranil Wickremsinghe, who has been labelled an IMF/American puppet and oversaw painful austerity for most people, got only 2.3 million votes (and his preferences were not counted as the top two only went into the second round — where preferences mattered. [Note — while it appears Premadasa won the second round, actually it’s not really the best way to look at it because so many voters put Dissanayake first in the first round. Voters could opt to add a second and third preference, but only if they wanted to.]
Results
Lanka https://election.newswire.lk/
Now the for hard part
Dissanayake has a strong mandate. Yet the establishment will now try to demonise him and demonize what he wants to do — he wants to restore power to the people and give them a fairer share of Sri Lanka’s considerable wealth potential/upside.
The media is labelling him a Marxist to install fear into voters … just like US presidential candidate Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk is namecalling Kamala Harris a “communist” in the leadup to that Nov. 5 vote.
France 24 snip, above
Perhaps counterintuitively…Dissanayake must now in the next few weeks focus his effort on the rich folks that did not vote for him.
He must show them that he wants to install better capitalism and not ruin their wealth but perhaps slightly limit its upside … that he’s not about communism or Marxism (which does not seem to work very well, as history has shown).
If he fails to do this, the rich establishment and military will stoke unrest and trouble … and use their considerable influence in the media to make his government get distracted and fail.
This is America’s playbook deployed across the world the past 60 years or so — to demonize social capitalism.
Change is needed.
Yet it also needs to be a gradual transition to sustainable regulation of capitalism, a better tax system, rather than huge shifts to all of the economy and all of society all at once.
Gradualism is crucial
The fewer big surprises, the easier it will be for the powerful rich…and for the poor. Bring the rich on board — they can see the need for change, too, to narrow the inequality gap. Wealthy people don’t want to be looking over their shoulders every time they venture out into the public.
Gradualism is how emerging nations can successfully leap frog rich countries. It will take discipline, honesty, transparency …and consistently throughout Dissanayake’s first term of five years.
If he wants 10 years in office (the maximum) — the next 100 days are super important.
(Updates headline to make it more concise, smooths some garbled language, earlier added note below and added better ending)
NOTE
A key example project that will showcase Dissanayake’s success or otherwise will be how the US investment in the Sri Lankan container-shipping port below fares.
See this tweaked snip of a biased Bloomberg story, which reveals if read carefully to the end that the US, China and India are all bidding to control/influence and bring finance to Sri Lanka, so the emerging nation really has plenty of options:
“One of the drawbacks is when small countries are asked to take “sides,” … more competition between China and India [and the US] for projects in the country is a good thing.
The US has invested $553 million in Colombo’s West International Terminal, which is being developed by India’s Adani Group. It’s one of America’s biggest investments in the region and a counter to China’s dominance there.”
Key lesson for Dissanayake: don’t favor any big countries/blocs, learn from India and play them off against each other. Don’t let your country be divided and conquered by others. Easier said than done.
The precise opposite is true vs this headline:
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2024/09/20/upending-imf-deal-is-sri-lankas-biggest-threat-president-says
It should have read: Upending IMF deal is Sri Lanka’s biggest opportunity