TWO YEARS have passed since Sri Lanka—crippled by covid-19, excessive borrowing and a series of policy blunders—defaulted on its debts. Inflation soared, the rupee plunged in value and fuel supplies ran out. Massive protests toppled the China-friendly president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who promptly fled to the Maldives. Things are no longer so terrible. Leaders have tamed inflation, secured a bail-out from the IMF and reached agreement with the country’s creditors on restructuring its debts.
Yet many Sri Lankans continue to demand fundamental change. It is not only austerity that angers them: they are fed up with the corruption and cronyism they spy among the country’s elites. All this helps explain the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, an outsider from a party with Marxist and insurgent roots, in a presidential election on September 21st. He easily beat Sajith Premadasa, the son of a former president, in the second round of counting (Sri Lanka uses a preferential voting system). Just 17% of voters selected Ranil Wickremesinghe, the incumbent (who has been prime minister six times) as their first choice.
The result was Sri Lanka’s biggest electoral upset since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. It was also the latest in a series of political upheavals across South Asia that could tilt the balance of power there between China and India. Although Chinese influence has waned lately because of debt problems linked to infrastructure lending, India suffered a setback in August with the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, a close ally, as prime minister of Bangladesh. A government collapse in Nepal in July brought a pro-China prime minister into office. And in the Maldives India has had to work hard to mend ties with a president who came to power last year on an “India out” platform.
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