‘Need a change’: Sri Lanka’s leftist win sparks hopes, bridges old divides

Abdul Rahuman Seyyadu Sulaiman, 56, wanted to be heard.

As Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake left the polling station at the Abeysingharama Temple in Maradana, Colombo, on Thursday, Sulaiman called out to him, urging him to stop and listen to his grievances. The police quickly accosted Sulaiman and asked him to leave the venue.

“I want [Dissanayake] to listen to the woes of my people,” Sulaiman said later. “When the former government cremated a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic, I protested it. I spoke on behalf of my religion. Justice was not served to the Muslim people.”

Sulaiman’s hope that Dissanayake will deliver justice that his predecessors did not finds echoes across Sri Lanka, which overwhelmingly voted for the centre-left leader in presidential elections in September. Now, that hope will be tested like never before.

Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) won a landslide majority in Thursday’s parliamentary election, securing 159 seats in a house of 225 members – representing a comfortable two-thirds majority. The main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), under its leader Sajith Premadasa, won just 40 seats.Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s New Democratic Front secured five seats, and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) of the Rajapaksa family, which dominated the country’s politics for much of the past two decades, won just three seats.