Just over two years ago, a mood of both crisis and optimism gripped Sri Lanka. Across the Indian Ocean island, the population of 23 million people was enduring hunger, medical shortages and unemployment as part of the worst economic disaster in its history.
Yet there was also a ripple of hope. A youth-led movement known as the aragalaya (struggle) had successfully toppled the authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his powerful family dynasty, who were accused of bankrupting the country through corrupt deals and policies. Protesters overran Rajapaksa’s presidential mansion, lying on his bed, swimming in his pool and working out in his gym.
As Sri Lanka heads to the polls on Saturday to vote in a new president for the first time since the fall of Rajapaksa, many say the economic crisis continues to devastate lives – while much of the optimism of the aragalaya has faded away.
As a country that endured more than 26 years of civil war and still remains heavily divided along ethnic lines, Sri Lanka’s past elections have always been dominated by issues of race, religion and war. Most of the power and wealth continues to be held by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, while the Tamil minority remain persecuted and economically and politically neglected.
Yet this time, it is an election primarily about the economy. Standing at her shuttered food stall in a suburb of Colombo, Seelavathi Nona, 42, said her family was struggling to survive and her only means of feeding her two children was microfinance loans. At the end of every day, she hands over all her earnings to pay back her debts, leaving her nothing to take home.
“The aragalaya movement didn’t achieve much,” she said. “The only thing they did was remove the Rajapaksas. There is still no business and everything is expensive.”
For the first time in recent history, analysts say widespread disenchantment with traditional politics means Saturday’s election is unlikely to deliver an overwhelming majority to any one candidate.
Three have emerged as frontrunners: the current president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was installed after Rajapaksa; Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the opposition; and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose leftwing coalition has recently surged in popularity. Should a clear winner fail to emerge, there are concerns it could plunge Sri Lanka into further turmoil.
“Whoever wins faces daunting challenges,” said Alan Keenan, a senior consultant on Sri Lanka at the NGO Crisis Group. “The economy is unlikely to get better any time soon, and to have a president without strong popular support could present a very tricky situation.”
Wickremesinghe, the six-time former prime minister who took over as president in the last two years of Rajapaksa’s term is pushing himself as the face of economic stability, having negotiated a $2.9bn (£2.1bn) bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as bolstering foreign currency reserves and bringing down inflation.
Yet while long queues outside petrol stations have disappeared and vital foreign imports have returned, levels of poverty have doubled in the past two years, affecting 25% of the country. Wickremesinghe’s unpopular policies have been blamed and are seen to have hit the poorest the hardest.
Many have questioned the strict conditions of the IMF loan, including high taxes, and the little long-term debt relief it provides, with some analysts accusing Wickremesinghe of having negotiated a flawed deal.
“As it stands – even in the best case scenario, even if Sri Lanka does absolutely everything that the IMF asks of it, does all the austerity measures and all the structural reforms which put huge pressures on the citizens – they will still be in a very precarious position,” Keenan said.
While the aragalaya movement ignited a desire for change and a move away from the corrupt dynastic politics that has dominated Sri Lanka for decades, many see Wickremesinghe as part of the crooked old guard. As an unelected president with neither a popular mandate nor a parliamentary majority, he has relied heavily on support from the Rajapaksas’ party to get his measures passed.
Meanwhile, none of the Rajapaksas or their close associates have faced investigation or reprisal under Wickremesinghe’s government, despite widespread allegations of misappropriated state assets and human rights abuses. In a sign of how little has changed, Namal Rajapaksa – the nephew of the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is among those accused of corruption – is also running for president.
Aththatage Lalitha, 72, said she hoped the election would bring about a much-needed political transformation. “We are hoping for a complete change to this system,” she said. “How can we keep living this way? The cost of living has skyrocketed.”
Lalitha said she would be voting for Premadasa, who as leader of the opposition for the past five years has cultivate an image of being a champion of the poor, running on a generous welfare agenda. “At least he is concerned about the poor man,” she said.
For swathes of others, the appetite for a split from the past has led to a surge of support for a previous outsider, the leftwing leader Dissanayake, who heads the Marxist National People’s Power (NPP) coalition.
Dissanayake’s party won just 3% of the vote in 2019’s presidential election but this time they have mobilised support through a vast grassroots operation. Large numbers have been flocking to his rallies, drawn in by punchy campaigns pledging to go after those who stole Sri Lanka’s assets, and promising deep systemic change and an end to corruption, which were core demands of the aragalaya.
Chathuranga Abeysinghe, an executive committee member of NPP, said an awakening had occurred after the economic crisis and political protests of 2022 and claimed NPP was the party that had “best captured the spirit and demands of the aragalaya”.
“The people have realised that the mandate they gave to consecutive governments over the past few decades has been repeatedly misused,” said Abeysinghe. “They are fed up with family-based politics, they want to know where all the misappropriated assets have gone and they want a better economic outlook. We are the only party speaking about these demands.”
Abeysinghe gave assurances that if the NPP gained power, it would finally hold past leaders, including the Rajapaksas, accountable for any corruption. However, many have voiced concern over the murky past of Dissanayake’s Marxist party, which in the 1980s led a bloody armed revolt against opponents using guerrilla forces and is still widely viewed with suspicion.
Abeysinghe said there had been a complete evolution of the party, and it now “steered away from violence at any cost”. “There has been no complaint for 30 years, people know we have transformed and we stand for progressive democracy,” he said.
Yet not all who took to the streets as part of the aragalaya two years ago were convinced their demands were being represented in this election. While the movement had spoken about the need for ethnic reconciliation and better representation for the Tamil minority, few believed that any of the frontrunners would be likely to address their concerns.
Chanu Nimasha, an activist who was part of the movement, said they believed it had ultimately been “hijacked” by political parties and those seeking power and influence.
“In the end, the aragalaya didn’t achieve much,” said Nimasha. “People realised the power they had when they sent Gota [Gotabaya Rajapaksa] home. But what happened was not what we expected. The crisis took a new direction and the economic hardships are still there.”
