The parliamentary election in Sri Lanka on 14 November, called by new president Anura Kumara Dissanayake to bolster legislative support for his policies, could set the tone for addressing the island nation’s economic and political challenges for years to come.
Nearly 17.1 million Sri Lankans are registered to vote to elect 225 parliamentarians, 196 directly and 29 through a proportional representation system.
The snap election was called by Mr Dissanayake after winning the presidential election in September on a campaign holding the country’s traditional ruling elite responsible for the economic collapse that caused Sri Lanka to default on its loans.
His National People’s Power alliance holds just three seats in the outgoing parliament but opinion polls give it an advantage over parties that have ruled Sri Lanka since its independence in 1948.
The president is looking to win a parliamentary majority to push through his policy agenda in a country that is still recovering from a severe financial crisis. The crisis, driven by economic mismanagement and political instability, sparked mass protests in 2022 that forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign as president and flee the country.
Mr Dissanayake has vowed to abolish the executive presidency, a centralised power system in place since 1978, combat corruption and end the austerity regime imposed under his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, who secured an IMF bailout for the nation but raised the cost of living.
In the past four years, the share of people living below the poverty line in Sri Lanka has risen to 25.9 per cent. The World Bank forecasts the economy to grow by just 2.2 per cent in 2024.
Mr Dissanayake needs his alliance to win a two-thirds majority of 225 seats in the legislature to press forward with his reform package.
“The people have great expectations for ‘system change’, including holding politicians accountable for corruption. But there is also a major debate happening about the economic trajectory,” Devaka Gunawardena, a political economist who is a research fellow at the Social Scientists’ Association in Sri Lanka, told Al Jazeera. “The question is whether Sri Lanka can get itself out of the debt trap while protecting people’s livelihoods, which have been devastated by the crisis and austerity.”
More than 8,800 candidates from 49 political parties and 284 independent groups are contesting the election but only about a thousand have actively campaigned, the BBC reported quoting Rohana Hettiarachchi, executive director of People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections.
Polling is taking place across 13,421 polling stations, with around 152,000 election officials and 27,000 police officers on duty.
The election is expected to bring about a generational shift in Sri Lanka as parties focussed on the youth like Mr Dissanayake’s National People’s Power coalition gain traction.
Sugeeswara Senadhira, a former Sri Lankan diplomat, wrote in Sapan News that young candidates were campaigning on the planks of anti-corruption, transparency, and economic reform and challenging traditional systems of political patronage. “The platform of the National People’s Power emphasises breaking from traditional political patronage and addressing long-standing issues such as economic inequity and corruption which have dominated the political discourse in Sri Lanka’s recent past.”
While Mr Dissanayake faces the task of addressing the country’s economic challenges, he will also want to ensure that citizens do not suffer further hardship.
He had opposed the conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for the bailout while campaigning for the presidency but agreed to honour the deal even as he sought to find ways to ease its harshest measures. The outcome of this election could shape the future of the country’s recovery efforts, observers said.
