Colombo: Sri Lanka’s President-elect, the Marxist-nationalist Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People Power, has a history of consistent antagonism towards India. He sees India has an overbearing power constantly out to subjugate little Sri Lanka.
As a Marxist, Dissanayaka has been a natural ally of China but his party NPP, especially its core, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has had, as its USP, not promotion of China’s interests in Sri Lanka, but whipping up and exploiting an innate fear of India that exists among the majority Sinhalese community in Sri Lanka The son of a labourer, Dissanayake was a student leader attached to the JVP in the 1980s and 1990s.
He cut his teeth in agitation politics in 1987, when the JVP was leading street battles in Colombo against the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and the deployment of the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) to implement a scheme of power devolution for the minority Tamils.
During his election campaign, Dissanayake had pointed out that the Sri Lankan market is flooded with Indian goods and that this must be stopped. He also said that the grant of the 99 giant oil tanks in Trincomalee to India should be annulled and that global tenders have to be floated for their development and use. He has also said that the projects that were given to the Ambanis need to be reviewed as these were not based on international tenders.
However, when talking to Indian media, Dissanayake had promised that his government would not do anything that endangers India’s security and that he recognises the importance of India in the region. It remains to be seen if the hard core Marxist and Sinhala nationalist can abandon his core anti-India constituency as President of Sri Lanka.
