Is Sri Lanka’s new President comparable to anyone on the world stage? Perhaps, if there is one leader who can be contrasted favourably to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the outset, it is probably President Lula of Brazil.
Lula da Silva is a left-wing populist who is now serving his third non-consecutive term as the President of the South America’s largest country, that should have by all accounts been an economic powerhouse, but isn’t. It was President Lula who transformed the fortunes of poverty stricken Brazilians, and lifted many millions out of poverty, in what used to be a chronically unmanageable country.
But, for this he faced a strong backlash from the wealthier classes, and the few who benefited from the latter’s largesse. It explains why he was never able to serve two consecutive terms despite his considerable achievements.
Lula hails from extremely humble beginnings, and therefore, President AKD’s rise to the Presidency has close parallels to Lula’s. Of course, Inacio Lula Da Silva is now an individual who has acquired worldwide fame as a leftist who transformed a terribly class-stratified country, that used to be ruled essentially by ruthless right-wing elites.
President AKD, on the other hand, has just assumed the mantle of the nation’s leadership. But yet, what’s interesting is that Lula’s left-leaning populist model is the closest match to everything the newly elected Sri Lankan President has been advocating during his entire stint as an opposition politician and leader of a left-wing political party with revolutionary beginnings.
COMPLACENT
There are populists and populists, but sometimes there is not much difference between a left-wing populist and a right-wing populist. Both Donald Trump and Javiar Milei are right-wing populists who railed against the cabal of elites, who they say, ruled their countries at the expense of the ordinary hard-working people.
Lula is cut from a different cloth from Milei and Trump of course, but he says the same unflattering things about the elite as right-wing populists do. It is no secret that the Sri Lankan President and his party, have vowed to “change the system”, which is code for dismantling elite-rule. The President and his Comrades in the NPP have said in so many words, that the political elites have ruined this country for the past 76 years since Independence.
However, the JVP’s brand of populism didn’t enjoy much currency in our political landscape, until after the events of 2022 and the economic meltdown, which made life intolerable for many Sri Lankans who faced rising costs and chronic shortages.
The rise of the President’s party is a sign that a relatively complaisant and perhaps somewhat contended mass of people were suddenly feeling angry that they were forced to exist below the poverty line. In this context it could perhaps be said that populism took hold, because familiar realities crumbled and fell in a heap.
This no doubt, ironically runs counter to the narration that the country had been mismanaged for 76 years. A dispassionate observer of events could ask, if that was the case, why the JVP’s brand of populism didn’t take hold earlier?
The counter to that argument would be that 2022 marked the nadir of continuous mismanagement, and signified where we as a country were inevitably headed after having, at best, a checkered post-independence existence as a fractured nationthat benefited a few.
Discontents that arose in similar contexts propelled Lula to power in Brazil for the third time in 2023, and Javier Milei in Argentina also in the same year, with the latter’s country seeingthe most pathetic rapid decline of any economy in their part of the world.
If both Lula and Mileiare populists, and if the new Sri Lankan President is cast in the same mould — though left-wing as Lula is, and not right-wing as Mileiis — it begs the question what outcome his Government’s rule would point to, if the record of the afore mentioned two leaders could be taken as an indicator?
Of course it may be unfair to say that all populists leaders end up in the same place, politically speaking, but a surface comparison between say President Lula’s first two years in office, and what could possibly be expected from an AKD Presidency, would not be entirely misplaced. So, here goes. President Lula brought about foreign policy changes that made Brazil seem more respectable in the rest of the world, after the execrable regime of predecessor Bolsarano had tarnished the image of that country in the rest of the world.
Bolsarano’s unhinged rule had more implications for Brazil than may at first have been apparent. Brazil is home to the lungs of the world, the amazing Amazon forests, and environmentalism is a key component of the Brazilian experience. But ex-President Bolsarano had encouraged logging in these pristine forests, and had deservedly earned the wrath of the world for this sacrilege.
Benefits
President Lula had said, irrespective of the economic benefits of forest-plunder to a limited number of poor people in a not so rich country, he would end the reckless assault on the Amazon. He also then launched a taxation policy that would create a more equitable society in which the wealthy Brazilians don’t get away without making a fair, proportionate contribution to the economy.
So far, this has to be a good performance, but with Brazil’s mid-term elections to Parliament looming, President Lula has seen a dip in popularity, though he still remains very much in control as an effective leader after years of chaos under his predecessor.
It’s the kind of performance Sri Lankans would want from their new leader. They would want that sharp contrast with the regimes of the past, that seemed to consider the hardworking people as an inconvenience at best, while they were helping themselves and their ilk with a vengeance.
Of course it’s classic populism, that the entrenched elite would be overthrown, and that there would be an equitable and efficient system that would replace that old order. This brand of populism is the rage especially in countries such as Brazil, Argentina and ours, where undoubtedly the longstanding system of rule by the dominant elite who represented the wealthy owning-classes so obviously failed.
But yet, nothing is guaranteed even when there is such root and branch transformation of a system as has happened now in Sri Lanka. Even Lula’s popularity waxes and vanes, and he wasn’t ever able to secure two consecutive terms in power. But yet his appeal endured, and every time the voters threw him or his left-leaning comrades aside, they subsequently wanted him back.
In the case of the right-wing populists so called, it appears that Trump is faring well, with a shot at re-election, and Milei is not faring too badly considering the bitter pill he made the people swallow in the name of austerity. It seems the compact that the populists makewith their people dieshard.
Going by this yardstick, the new Sri Lankan populists at the helm would have much leeway to carry out reforms as populism seems to have a long shelf life. It does, because the people have lost trust in conventional politicians by a mile.
carte blanche
But it doesn’t mean that people are willing to give populists either from the left or the right, carte blanche. They will hold them to account and sometimes as with the case of Lula, they may send them home packing, only to usher them back into powerlater because the alternative was putrid.
However, it is also noteworthy that populists tend to do the hard work, because if nothing else they have to maintain their populist street-cred as it were. If they fail, it is not usually due to want of trying but due to wrong policy or bad circumstances. It’s generally not because they were corrupt or self-aggrandising. But even so, there are populists and populists, and some who shed their populism as time goes on. Sri Lankan people would hope their new government will be made up of a determined brand of populists, that are inclined to prevail and fight on.
