{"id":143781,"date":"2024-08-29T11:43:08","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T17:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=143781"},"modified":"2024-08-29T03:47:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T10:47:26","slug":"sri-lanka-leftist-candidate-gains-ground-with-anti-corruption-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/08\/29\/sri-lanka-leftist-candidate-gains-ground-with-anti-corruption-push\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka Leftist Candidate Gains Ground With Anti-Corruption Push"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/span>\u00a0Anusha Ondaatjie Courtesy BNNBloomberg<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/
A worker at the site of the Colombo Port City next to a hoarding of the Colombo International Financial City project, both developed by China Harbour Engineering Co., in Colombo in 2018. (Atul Loke\/Photographer: Atul Loke\/Bloomber)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(Bloomberg) — A candidate with roots in Marxist socialist policy in Sri Lanka is gaining momentum in next month\u2019s presidential election with a strong message to combat corruption and scrutinize investment deals with China to avoid another debt trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, leads the National People\u2019s Power, a coalition of leftist political parties and groups backed by protesters who ousted the powerful Rajapaksa government in 2022. He\u2019s emerged as a key challenger to incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who remains unpopular for carrying out austerity measures in exchange for an International Monetary Fund bailout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dissanayake is campaigning on a platform of clean governance and combating corruption in a country that\u2019s still saddled with high debt two years after an unprecedented economic crisis and historic default. Sri Lanka\u2019s debt had ballooned over the years partly because of Chinese loans to fund ambitious projects ranging from ports, roads and a lotus tower.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beijing has faced allegations of burdening developing countries like Sri Lanka with debt through its funding of infrastructure projects, accusations it\u2019s denied.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

China had been an easy source of money\u201d for past governments and the NPP wants to ensure future investment isn\u2019t wasteful, said Harini Amarasuriya, a lawmaker and a member of the coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t want easy money coming in to fund unproductive projects and not care about corruption,\u201d Amarasuriya, an academic who has become one of the more public faces of the group, said in an interview in the capital Colombo. That\u2019s what we expect of any country, and that\u2019s how we would want it to be with China.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coalition\u2019s main party is the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which is led by Dissanayake. Once known for its violent uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s, the JVP has since re-branded itself and entered mainstream politics. Some surveys have polled Dissanayake as a leading contender in the Sept. 21 vote while he\u2019s been drawing substantial crowds at his campaign rallies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dissanayake is drawing support from the 2022 protesters, who wanted to curb the executive powers of the presidency, eradicate graft and bring the ruling Rajapaksa clan to task for their role in bankrupting the country. The Rajapaksas cultivated ties with China to help rebuild the country in the 2010s after brutally ending a decades-long civil war with Tamil separatists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amarasuriya said the leftist coalition wants to maintain ties with China since the country had been one of the few to back Sri Lanka when it faced global scrutiny for human rights violations as the civil war drew to a close. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are cognizant of the fact that China has politically backed us in sensitive moments,\u201d she said. And we want to maintain those relations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IMF Bailout<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The popularity of the leftists\u2019 candidate adds to political uncertainty that could jeopardize Sri Lanka\u2019s debt restructuring deal with creditors and possibly delay bailout funding from the IMF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Markets do not have past experience to make a judgment call on NPP policies,\u201d said Thilina Panduwawela, a senior economist at Frontier Research in Colombo. And the election itself is too close to call and that is why there is some uncertainty in markets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also contesting the election is the main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, who leads a breakaway group from Wickremesinghe\u2019s party, and Namal Rajapaksa, the scion of the populist clan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amarasuriya said her party was against some of the tax measures Wickremesinghe\u2019s government was implementing to meet the IMF targets. Even so, she acknowledged that the conditions of the loan program, including the primary balance and the debt-to-GDP ratio, were fairly standard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dissanayake\u2019s election manifesto, which was launched on Aug. 26, proposes a number of tax amendments and more oversight on government spending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s pledged to increase the income tax-free threshold and equitably\u201d amend rates and tax brackets. He also wants to remove some essential health, education and food items from the 18% value-added tax to make them more affordable, Amarasuriya said. The tax threshold has had a huge impact on the middle class and professionals, she said, leading to a severe brain drain with over 3,000 doctors as well as IT and banking personnel having left the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amarasuriya added that the current administration has not paid enough attention\u201d to some other IMF conditions, including bolstering social security networks and eradicating graft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With corruption, the approach will be to clean it from the top\u201d where all elected representatives have to behave based on a code of conduct that is strictly enforced, she said. There will be restrictions on government appointments and the tender processes \u2014 two areas where corruption gets initiated,\u201d Amarasuriya said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign investors have nothing to fear\u201d as the party will make it easier for business by eliminating corruption and putting in systems, she added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Anusha Ondaatjie Courtesy BNNBloomberg (Bloomberg) — A candidate with roots in Marxist socialist policy in Sri Lanka is gaining momentum in next month\u2019s presidential election with a strong message to combat corruption and scrutinize investment deals with China to avoid another debt trap. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, leads the National People\u2019s Power, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}