Anura Kumara Dissanayake: A hardcore Marxist who will now take the reins of Sri Lanka

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, elected the new president of Sri Lanka, is a hardened Marxist whose party made two violent bids to seize power in the island nation, leaving tens of thousands of people dead, but who no more believes in Mao’s dictum that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

It is not the only U-turn Dissanayake, now 55, has made since plunging into Left wing politics while in school in the 1980s when Sri Lanka was in ferment over a bilateral pact which allowed India to deploy its troops in the country’s north and east in a bid to end Tamil separatism.

How he cheated death

Viewing this an insult, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) or People’s Liberation Front, which Dissanayake now heads, unleashed a bloody campaign against the Indian presence and also locked horns with the Sri Lankan state, triggering terrible violence which shook the country and consumed thousands of lives on both sides.

It was also the time when Dissanayake narrowly escaped death. Colombo had then let loose state-backed death squads that picked up JVP suspects at will. Hundreds disappeared without trace. When he realised that the noose was tightening around him, Dissanayake hid at the house of one of his school teachers for a month, until the danger evaporated for him.

JVP and India

For a long time, the JVP was a trenchant critic of the South Asian giant and neighbour India. JVP cadres were taught “five lessons” at ideological classes; the fifth was on “Indian expansionism”.

But in February this year, Dissanayake stunned foes and admirers alike when he led, on invitation, a JVP delegation to New Delhi where he met top Indian officials and policymakers as it became clear that the Marxists were rapidly climbing the political ladder.

The brief visit further reinforced that belief, boosting the JVP’s standing and confidence ahead of the country’s most fiercely-contested presidential battle that took place on Saturday.

Mobilising support

And with many opinion polls predicting a possible win for Dissanayake, who in the last presidential battle got just 3 per cent of the votes and whose JVP has only three members in the 225-seat Sri Lankan parliament, the Marxist called on Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Islamic religious leaders to mop up as many votes as he could. The efforts have undoubtedly paid off.

Humble background

Born on November 24, 1968 in a village in Anuradhapura district, Dissanayake’s father was a labourer and mother a housewife.

Dissanayake was only three years old when the JVP staged its first armed insurrection in Sri Lanka in a bid to capture power. Backed by North Korea, the JVP rebellion shook the country before it was violently put down with the help of friendly countries, including India.

Joining JVP

After receiving early education in the region, Dissanayake graduated in physical science from the University of Kelaniya in 1995. He had joined the JVP in 1987 (the year Indian troops landed in Sri Lanka) and remained with its political wing.

It was also in 1995 that he became the National Organiser of the Socialist Students Association and entered the JVP Central Committee. He joined the party’s highest decision-making body, the politburo, in 1998. By then, the JVP had formally entered parliamentary politics.

Parliamentary stint

Dissanayake first entered Sri Lankan parliament in 2000. Despite at times holding ministerial portfolios (Dissanayake was the agriculture minister in 2004-05), the JVP remained on the fringes of parliamentary politics that mainstream parties appeared better suited for.

Only once, in 2004, the JVP won 39 parliament seats, a feat it could never repeat. In February 2014, Dissanayake was named the new leader of the JVP, succeeding Somawansa Amarasinghe.

Economic meltdown

The man remained and also ran in Sri Lankan politics for eight long years till the country’s unprecedented economic meltdown triggered massive street protests that succeeded in driving away then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of the country.

Although mainstream politicians quickly installed the veteran Ranil Wickremesinghe in office, the JVP gained enormous prestige as it was the real brain behind the protests which accompanied widespread shortages as Colombo ran out of money to buy even essential goods.

In those months of street power, called “aragalaya” (struggle) in Sinhalese, the well-oiled JVP deepened its tentacles across the country, barring the north and parts of the east where Tamils are in a majority. It kept emphasising that economic equality had to be achieved and the country’s endemic corruption and corrupt political players had to go.

A revolutionary leader

By the time September 21 dawned, the message had reached virtually every village and town, cutting across the rural-urban divide. The JVP said its leader Dissanayake was the only man who could bring about a peaceful revolution.

Asked once who his favourite gurus were, Dissanayake, a father of two who keeps his personal life truly private, took five names: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In one way, he is a mixture of all of them but is clear in his mind that the road to revolution in Sri Lanka passes through the ballot box.