By Isolde Doubell
09/10/2024
Fifty-five-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected as the ninth President of Sri Lanka on Saturday, 21 September. Dissanayake’s election marks a major turning point in Sri Lankan politics. Unlike most previous presidents, he does not come from a political lineage. Additionally, his controversial Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Party is Marxist-based and was involved in the violent insurrections in the 1970s and ’80s, for which Dissanayake has apologised since becoming party leader in 2014. It was also one of the lowest winning margins ever, with Dissanayake receiving 42.3% of the votes. However, considering that he only won 3% of the vote in the 2019 presidential elections, it was an impressive gain. Since none of the candidates attained more than 50%, the country had a second vote for the first time in its history. About 75% of the 17 million eligible voters cast their ballots, and the country’s elections commission said it was the most peaceful election in Sri Lanka’s history.
Dissanayake, popularly known by his initials “AKD”, comes from a small farming household that was not politically active. His father was an office aide in the government Survey Department, and his mother was a homemaker. He was the first student from his school to attend university, and it was while studying for his science degree that he first became involved with the JVP, joining the student wing in the late 1980s during the time of the violent insurrection. He won the presidential election as part of the National People’s Power (NPP), a larger socialist political coalition comprising dozens of smaller parties, activists, and trade unions. Since becoming their leader in 2019, the coalition has toned down some of the more extreme Marxist ideologies of the JVP. The economy was undoubtedly the central issue in Sri Lanka’s presidential election, unlike in past votes, when ethnic divides played a more prominent role.
In 2022, economic and political disaster struck Sri Lanka: the country found itself almost bankrupt and without foreign reserves to import basic food, fuel, and medicines. As a result, the people began to turn against traditional parties and political leaders. A mass protest movement, known as aragalaya (“struggle” in Sinhalese), led to the toppling of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his powerful family dynasty, who were accused of rampant corruption and misappropriation of state assets. Dissanayake’s promises of transparency and of “radically rooting out the culture of corruption”, as well as promoting unity amidst ethnic diversity, became increasingly popular. His promise to renegotiate the terms of a $3bn International Monetary Fund loan, which his predecessor President Wickremesinghe had negotiated to stabilise the economy, was also well received. He pledged to make austerity measures more bearable for the poor. “We believe that we can turn this country around, we can build a stable government… and move forward. For me, this is not a position, it is a responsibility,” Dissanayake told reporters after his victory.
Sri Lanka’s three main ethnic groups are the Sinhalese (around 75% according to the 2012 census), Sri Lankan Tamils (11%), and Moors, descendants of Arab and Indian traders, who make up 9.3% of the population. When Sri Lanka gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948, there was a surge of Sinhalese nationalism that disadvantaged the Tamils. Tamils resented these discriminatory policies, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) conducted an armed struggle to claim the north and east of Sri Lanka as an independent ‘homeland’ for Tamils. This civil war lasted from 1983 to 2009 and cost more than 80,000 lives. Although Sri Lankan forces defeated the LTTE in 2009, the Tamil question remains unresolved. The JVP has been a staunchly Sinhala Buddhist party, and therefore, some in the Tamil community did not greet Dissanayake’s election with optimism.
Sri Lanka has a remarkable degree of religious diversity, with four major religions represented among its 22 million people. The Sinhalese are mostly Buddhist, most Tamils are Hindu, and the Moors and Malays are predominantly Muslim. Sizeable minorities of both the Sinhalese and Tamils are Christians, most of whom are Roman Catholic (6.1%). Protestants make up 1.3% of the population. The 1978 constitution, while guaranteeing freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the freedom to change religion, grants “the foremost place” to Buddhism.
According to Christians in Sri Lanka, persecution is very real despite the constitution. In 2019, suicide bombers linked to ISIL (ISIS) attacked churches, hotels, and other locations across the country, killing 296 people and injuring hundreds during the Easter Sunday bombings – the worst attack in Sri Lanka’s history. While this was an attack by Muslim extremists, persecution is usually most severe from Buddhist nationalists. According to Release International (a UK-based ministry supporting persecuted Christians), “the Roman Catholic and Assemblies of God churches are recognised as traditional, but evangelical churches are not. There has been increasing hostility against evangelicals because they have been branded as the ‘born again’-cult – a term that has been deliberately used to imply Christian ‘extremism’. We praise God for the vision, the faithfulness, the courage, and the compassion… found in the hearts of many pastors. The gospel is spreading, and the Church is growing.”
Ivor Poobalan, principal of Colombo Theological Seminary in Sri Lanka, wrote in Christianity Today in 2022: “A major challenge faced by the Sri Lankan Church has been the unprecedented persecution that began in the early 1990s. Fuelled by extreme Buddhist movements, it picked up momentum so that initial discriminatory sentiments against Christians quickly escalated to allegations of unethical conversion, full-on confrontations, attacks on pastors and believers, arson of church properties, and even a couple of incidents of martyrdom. This situation became an opportunity for the maturing of the Sri Lankan Church, bringing about a unity and collaboration not seen before. It was the experience of persecution that opened the Church to a new sense of interdependence, including a committee formed with Catholic and Anglican bishops together with charismatic and Pentecostal pastors, working diligently to stave off some of the graver dangers of rising persecution. Thus, upon reflection, we can see how God’s purpose of Christian maturity has graciously played out through the travails of the Church in Sri Lanka. You know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete (James 1:3–4).”
Join us in praying for the following:
- That, as the Sri Lankan Church hopes for change under the new government, they will not trust in man but in Christ alone.
- For Christian pastors in particular to be strong under harassment and to have Holy Spirit wisdom for every situation.
- That the Sri Lankan evangelical churches will be grounded in the Truth and that they will not be vulnerable to mismanagement, personality cults, and false teaching.
- For the new government to succeed in good governance and to manage the country’s economy and payment of the IMF loans without compromising the situation of the poor.
