Sri Lanka has experienced significant political change in recent times. The election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in September 2024 and a parliamentary vote that followed in November emphasized people's desire for improved governance and better economic management.
Yet the lasting impacts of the National People’s Power (NPP)’s rise to power remain unclear and the road to deeper reform is far from assured. Local government elections slated for May 6 will give voters a chance to weigh in yet again.
To understand more about the prevailing political dynamics, the government’s reform agenda and the island nation’s media landscape, we spoke with Sri Lankan journalist, Amantha Perera. Perera is a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia whose writing has appeared in TIME, the Guardian, the Washington Post and elsewhere.
Q: What are the principal issues animating this election?
Perera: Local elections in Sri Lanka are not a big deal unless a national level leadership makes them out to be, or they are part of an intense national campaign — like when Gotabaya Rajapaksa made his official foray into elections pitting his camp against others in 2018 at the local government elections.
During the interval between this election and the general elections, no real issue of national significance has emerged. We have had minor issues like the ex-speaker’s absentee PhD certificate and how to relocate wild monkeys, but nothing that has moved the national political dial. Even a spate of underworld murders and the arrest of an ex-Inspector General of Police has failed to create a buzz felt at grassroots levels. It seems like after the intense political storms of 2022, 2023 and 2024, the nation just wants to get on with it.
These are like the third installment in an election cycle that began with the presidential polls last year. The NPP is likely to come out on top. But there could be some erosion of their base as well. Overall, I predict that the status quo holds.
Where do things stand vis-à-vis the government’s reform agenda?
The reform agenda has not really moved except for dealing with corruption and reducing public spending and general wastage. For instance, government MPs are using fewer vehicles and have reduced staff and resources. These changes have been well received by the general public. There is also lots of support for government initiatives to revitalize investigations into decades-old political murders and corruption cases, especially involving the once-powerful Rajapaksa family. But these investigations are a double-edged sword: they raise public expectations on prosecutions which are not realistic or practical.
Other reforms, like rescinding the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Online Safety Act, both of which could be draconian in implementation, are non-starters for now. The government appears to be relying on public trust that it will not use these provisions as tools to throttle democratic rights. But already, there have been issues on how the current administration has used these two acts. The longer the government sits on these, public antipathy will grow — first gradually and then, when public support has eroded substantially, these frustrations will feed into it.
Voters will react swiftly if changes and reforms made in the financial sector do not influence an economic uptick, especially for wage earners. The NPP’s ascendance relied on the economic shambles in the aftermath of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency. They were elected on the back of generations of frustrations that were tipped over by the financial crisis. People expect their financial woes to ease and will not be patient for long. Sri Lankan citizens also now have a taste that they can effect change by way of mass mobilization.
The NPP does have a much larger, longer grace period from the Sri Lanka public than their predecessors, but it is by no means an open-ended agreement.
How would you describe the media environment in the country?
It is probably in a very dire state, probably the worst in decades. This is not because of state persecution or a repressive reporting environment as we used to have in the past when colleagues were killed, assaulted, and forced to flee the country.
Ironically, the dire state of the media is instead due to the erosion of professionalism among practitioners and the lack of adaptability to the digital pivot. This is not something that came about suddenly but rather over decades. Only now do we see the impact. On top of this, digital influence has created another layer: journalists cannot seem to figure out whether they are professional journalists or influencers, switching between both roles as it suits them.
The low pay in the media sector makes it hard to retain experienced journalists with multiple skill sets, vast experience, and aptitude. They migrate to other sectors. Occasionally, the politicization of editorials also pushes journalists out.
How has the role and influence of legacy media changed?
Legacy media has seen its once quite intimidating position slip away. It is still a factor because of TV and radio, although print possibly is the weakest in terms of community penetration. When news breaks, most citizens now turn to social media for updates. Most of the time, the initial news sources turn out to be of the non-journalistic variety.
Indeed, an underreported impact of the 2022 Aragalaya civil protests is how they solidified the significance of social media and digitized communications in Sri Lanka. The information pipeline for the protests was social media — nothing else.
I never used legacy media for live updates. I just followed the protesters and media personalities who were live-tweeting or streaming the protests. The best information was shared in partially closed messaging groups. But as much as they offered authentic information, these sources also operated as accelerators for paid content, fakes, gossip, abuse, and sexualized content. There are hardly any prevention measures in place. Even with a broad bandwidth and connectivity linking the country’s population, digital hygiene levels remain very low, even among journalists.
Impunity has long been an issue, including attacks on journalists. Do you see that changing in the near- to medium-term?
Cosmetic, yes — real change, no. Impunity exerted by Sri Lankan political leaders is ingrained in the system. It is something that dates back even before independence, a sort of feudalistic thing. The social equilibrium is maintained by an acquiescent top-down social structure, especially so when ethnic, religious or party-based power is challenged. For that to change, it takes time, a long time.
Fortunately, that process for such change probably got a bolt with the Aragalaya protests. The protests showed that entrenched powerhouses which have deepened national fractures for their own survival can be unceremoniously kicked out and made to feel feeble by mass public movements.
Cycles of impunity have repeated in Sri Lanka because the media by and large have been compliant for a variety of reasons — ethnic, religious, party politics, and even profit. Those who have challenged it have faced terrible consequences. None of the murders of journalists have been resolved and those responsible prosecuted.
Right now, the Sri Lankan media landscape is too splintered to call for unified action. A case in point is the draconian Online Safety Act which any journalist should take seriously, but no cohesive media voice has taken this up.
Impunity against the media as a current threat is less, but impunity as a potential recourse to shut down critical voices remains a possibility. A very real one.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Image by David Peterson from Pixabay.