A WIN discussion November 2024. Follow the meeting HERE. Following its historic triumph in last month’s presidential election, a party which had previously led two bloody failed insurrections has now in a snap general election won an unprecedented parliamentary majority. From just three seats in the previous parliament, the NPP (formerly the JVP) has achieved a sweeping landslide victory, winning an overwhelming 62% of the votes and 159 seats out of 225 – more than any Sri Lankan party in history.
This result embodies in electoral form the revolutionary upsurge of 2022: the so-called aragalaya or “struggle” which had already sent the former dictatorial president fleeing the country for his life. Together with the brutal and corrupt Rajapaksa dynasty, all the despised traditional parties have been swept into oblivion.
Now the new president Dissanayake has an inescapable popular mandate: to face down the predatory vultures of the IMF and lift the population out of starvation. But instead he is trying desperately to negotiate a hollow compromise with the country’s creditors. To carry the revolt of the masses through to a successful conclusion will require unity with the insurgent masses of the entire sub-continent.
We were proud to welcome to this week’s WIN meeting some of those comrades who formed an electoral bloc to spread this message: Swasthika Arulingham and members of the Front Line Socialist Party. It is understandable that in the general determination to give the NPP the mandate it was seeking, they failed to win a spectacular number of votes: but their warnings will be remembered by many; they are courageously laying the foundations for future victory.