How worried should Sri Lanka be about its ex-Marxist president?
He is not as bad as he sounds. But the risk of disappointment is high
The political background of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was sworn in as president of Sri Lanka on September 23rd after winning a run-off election, looks alarming. His party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), began as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist movement that led two unsuccessful but bloody uprisings against the Sri Lankan state in the 1970s and 1980s. Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans were killed or simply “disappeared” in the insurrections and their suppression, which overlapped with a civil war between the government and Tamil rebels.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Sri Lanka’s new ex-Marxist president”
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