Along with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and MP Dullas Alahapperuma, Janatha Vimukthi Peramunay (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake is in the race for President after Parliament nominated the three with Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa withdrawing his bid on Tuesday.
Aruna Kumara Dissanayake, the leader from Sri Lanka’s leftist JVP or the People’s Liberation Front, is known as a young and fiery politician. At a press conference last month, Dissanayake, 53, said that his party is ready to pull out Sri Lanka from the current crisis in a short time.
“Within a short period, such as six months, we can stabilise the country by rectifying the primary causes of the economic crisis. Thereafter hold a general election and appoint a new government with the mandate of the public,” Dissanayake was quoted as saying by Newswire Sri Lanka.
Dissanayake became JVP leader at the 7th national convention in February 2014. He has been in Parliament since 2000.
During President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s tenure, Dissanayake served as the minister of agriculture, livestock and land in 2004.
He took part in the presidential candidate in 2019 as the National People’s Power (NPP) party’s candidate and received 4,18,553 votes, which accounted for 3.16% of valid votes in the election. Since then, the party has been called JVP or NPP interchangeably.
In early 1970s, North Korea supported JVP in terms of providing training to cadres, which soured diplomatic relations between the two countries. In 2017, the Sri Lankan government imposed sanctions on North Korea — a move criticised by JVP’s Dissanayake who said North Korea is a socialist and Sri Lanka should support it.
All eyes are now on the July 20 presidential election, which hopes to end the political crisis of the country until the next general election likely in 2023.
Sri Lanka is in the eye of political chaos since the country plunged into a deep economic mess with rising inflation, hunger and debt abound and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing to Singapore amidst all this.
Thousands of protesters took to streets and stormed offices and private houses of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Gotabaya Rajapaksa demanding immediate resignation.
In 2020, the World Bank called Sri Lanka a lower middle income group country as its currency and economy collapsed. PM Wickremesinghe had earlier this month declared Sri Lanka “bankrupt”.
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