Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake faces daunting debt dance

September 21 was a day of many firsts in Sri Lanka. Millions of people went to the polls to vote in the first presidential elections since mass protests forced the country’s last elected president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, from office in 2022.

It also marked the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that a second round of counting had to take place after none of the candidates secured the 50% margin required for victory.

A count of the second-choice votes revealed the biggest shock in decades. In Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Sri Lankans, for the first time, elected a candidate who does not belong to the two major parties that have dominated the country’s politics since independence in 1948.

Dissanayake leads the National People’s Power alliance (NPP), which includes his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) – a party known for its left-wing policies.

Soon after being sworn in as president, Dissanayake appointed an interim cabinet of three ministers. They included academic, feminist and human rights activist Harini Amarasuriya, who was selected as the third female prime minister in Sri Lanka’s history.

He then dissolved the 225-member parliament, in which his NPP alliance had only three seats, and announced that a parliamentary election would be held on November 14. Dissanayake has said previously that there was “no point continuing with a parliament that is not in line with what the people want.”

Dissanayake has a daunting task ahead of him. Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt and suspended payments on around US$78 billion in foreign and domestic loans in 2022, triggering the worst economic crisis in the country’s history.

And, while no longer on the brink of collapse, the economy is still in a precarious state. So how will Dissanayake revive