When the National People’s Power (NPP) government came to office just over a year ago in Sri Lanka, it staked its legitimacy on the ability to deliver on governance reforms and its anti-corruption agenda while restoring economic stability. However, the devastation caused by the cyclone that struck the country on November 28 has now become a critical political stress test for the government. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is now tasked with managing a large-scale natural disaster on the heels of a national economic crisis a few years prior, which had led to rising inequality and greater poverty. Most immediately, the cyclone has led to the loss of hundreds of lives, disruption of livelihoods, and a devastating impact on national infrastructure and the economy. But at a structural level, the tragedy has exposed the weakness of a small government in times of calamity, when the role of the state is more acutely needed. While the political opposition remains largely fragmented, nationalist groups among them see this crisis as an increased opportunity to galvanize support against the government, especially by branding its failure to respond to the cyclone more expediently as an issue of inexperience and incompetence. Meanwhile, the government seems to continue prioritizing the media cycle on both domestic and foreign policy issues, with policy responses remaining reactive and preventing long-term strategic resilience.
Cyclone Ditwah Exposes Systemic Inequities
After the 2022 financial crisis and subsequent International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout, successive Sri Lankan governments have achieved the IMF’s fiscal consolidation and economic stabilization benchmarks, and the NPP government aimed to do the same. However, this success has come by way of aggressive revenue collection efforts and simply not spending the budget allocated, instead of a comprehensive effort to ensure sustainable and equitable growth. Now this narrative of economic stabilization, built on restoring macroeconomic balance through a managerial, neoliberal state, is being acutely tested by Cyclone Ditwah.
The Dissanayake government’s stabilization efforts have done little to relieve the hardships of those excluded from the economic restoration process. For instance, since 2022, persistently high poverty rates have affected nearly a quarter of the population, compared to roughly one in ten people before the pandemic. A segment of this newly impoverished population is likely to feel the impact of natural disasters more acutely, having experienced downward social mobility in recent years. Worryingly, initial estimates suggest that over 275,000 children are among the 1.4 million people affected by the cyclone. While the government has announced a comprehensive housing, repair, and resettlement package and allocated Rs. 10 billion (USD $32.35 million) for cash compensation to all disaster-affected persons, these efforts will be tested on their capacity to deliver. The Dissanayake government’s previous recognition of the inadequacy of the Aswesuma cash transfer program and introduction of a new mechanism called Prajashakthi focused on community investment schemes suggests a desire to consider the most vulnerable populations more seriously, but only time will tell if these efforts succeed.
Instead, this dominant economic stabilization drive seems to have disproportionately benefited the wealthier segments of society, leading to Sri Lanka becoming one of the most unequal societies in Asia and the Pacific. Moreover, perceptions of this inequality are heightened by the increase in newly imported luxury vehicles on the streets and normalized by the appointment of executives of bluechip companies to senior government positions, which, in turn, have raised concerns over conflicts of interest. The extent of corporate inroads into political decisionmaking was seen most recently in the post-disaster context, when the government appointed a Management Committee for the Rebuilding Sri Lanka Fund that was composed almost entirely of the country’s wealthiest businessmen. These developments raise concerns over the state facilitating corporate profit lines over more inclusive and equitable economic development.
Anti-Corruption Mandate and Its Limits
While inclusive economic reforms remain elusive, one area where the government has done well and enjoys considerable popular support is on the implementation of its anti-corruption agenda. A year into its anti-corruption mandate, with a few high-profile arrests and convictions of an ex-president, former cabinet ministers, and other officials, the Dissanayake government has gained a degree of political legitimacy with the public. A closer look at the arrests and cases pending in the courts, including those involving members of the Rajapaksa family, reflect an attempt to transform Sri Lanka from its patronage orientation to a managerial state.
However, the government’s attempt to couple this anti-corruption drive with anti-drugs operations, portraying both actions as fighting vices on all fronts under the banner of “Clean Sri Lanka,” may have tainted the agenda. Framing such law-and-order initiatives as necessary measures that are beyond public debate could be seen as an attempt to pre-empt oversight and limit checks on potential government overreach, especially in upholding human rights. On several occasions, the government has bypassed civil procedure to investigate what they claim as defamatory political statements by going directly to the Criminal Investigation Department of the police. Additionally, at the local level, while Clean Sri Lanka continues to function as a broad framework for making the government more accessible and visible, the opposition alleges that the NPP is using existing public safety committees to politicize state power.
The NPP’s anti-corruption drive may also have inadvertently sacrificed efficiency for transparency and could hamper Sri Lanka’s future reform agenda. For instance, it has become a common refrain that Sri Lankan senior civil servants fear making executive decisions, lest they be implicated in legal matters and dragged to court on corruption charges. A potential slowdown in state machinery could be interpreted by the government as an opposition tactic to undermine its agenda, potentially prompting the Dissanayake regime to alienate the civil service. This is increasingly important to consider in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah, when several public officials reportedly hesitated to act proactively due to concerns about being accused of overstepping their administrative authority.
A Challenger Emerging? The Opposition’s Shifting Strategies
While the Dissanayake administration has been learning the ropes of governance over the past year, the opposition parties have also attempted to regroup and, although they remain fragmented, Sri Lanka’s political system seems to be transitioning from bi- to tri-polar. There are clear ideological differences within this camp, which further prevents an easy co-existence among them. The Samagi Jani Balawegaya (SJB), led by Sajith Premdasa, has a liberal, social market economy identity, while the emerging Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP)-Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)-United National Party alliance is adopting a nationalist face while the group’s economic policy remains relatively ambiguous. And with the arrest of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe in August, these disparate opposition groups have coalesced around challenging the NPP government for this decision, likening it to a “constitutional dictatorship.”
A recent public rally called the Mahajana Handa (People’s Voice), organized by the SLPP, SLFP, UNP, and others, provided a taste of what this oppositional challenge would look like. The event sought to mobilize public discontent against what the organizers described as the government’s “undemocratic actions, misgovernance, and corruption.” The rally marked a few important developments in the opposition camp. First, the rise of tainted former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son Namal Rajapaksa within this nationalist bloc was evident, both in references made to him by other speakers and in his delivery of the rally’s concluding address. Second, Sajith Premadasa’s leadership of the opposition was implicitly challenged, along with his insistence on carving out an exclusive political space for SJB rather than consolidating a broader, more inclusive front.
Nationalist groups have also attempted to leverage the insecurities of the Sinhala Buddhist majority for support against the government, by developing a narrative about government actions as a threat to Buddhism, Sinhalese culture, and sovereignty. While the NPP government has attempted to navigate these challenges, a recent episode surrounding the placement of a Buddha statue in Trincomalee signals that this balance may be reaching a breaking point. The incident involved the police removing a Buddha statue due to it violating a court order. The resulting backlash by the nationalist camp led to the NPP backtracking on its position and the Minister of Public Security explaining the action as a measure to ensure the statue’s safety, and the statue being subsequently replaced. The eye of Cyclone Ditwah passing near Trincomalee a few days later fuelled conservative superstition that the disaster was an expression of divine wrath against the government’s stance on the Buddha statue.
This combined with the Dissanayake administration’s delay in declaring a “State of Disaster” under Sections 11 and 12 of the Disaster Management Act has provided steam to the opposition’s allegations of incoherence and inexperience within the NPP government. Tamil political parties were quick to point out that official disaster-related communications were initially not available in Tamil, critically excluding Tamil-speaking minorities who lived in the worst hit areas such as the Central, Northern, and Eastern Provinces.
Early government estimates suggest that total losses due to the cyclone could exceed USD $6-7 billion, which is twice as much as the IMF’s current loan to Sri Lanka of USD $2.9 billion. The opposition could use this crisis to craft and consolidate a more coherent anti-government narrative, which is already being seen in some ways with Premadasa’s call on the government to revise its 2026 budget and re-negotiate a new IMF program that takes into account the impact of the disaster. A formidable opposition challenge to the NPP government may be emerging.
Navigating Domestic Pressures on Foreign Relations
With increasing multipolarity and the volatility that accompanies a world order in transition, Sri Lanka’s geopolitical vulnerability as a small state is increasing. But the government’s preoccupation with firefighting on the domestic and international fronts distracts it from developing a more long-term, resilient outlook, ready to take on future challenges.
The government has adopted a strategy of broad engagement with all major powers, in part to achieve its domestic imperatives. However, this attempt to increase Colombo’s diplomatic presence internationally is already facing limitations, as seen in Sri Lanka’s absence from the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, at a moment of renewed India-China rapprochement, and its growing isolation at the UN Human Rights Council, where the latest Resolution on Sri Lanka was passed without a vote. While this was a moment of diminished solidarity for Sri Lanka on the international arena, in local news cycles, especially in Sinhala, the incident was able to pass as a non-issue, particularly in the absence of an explicit “defeat” on an international forum. This has allowed the NPP to better manage domestic perceptions and push back on the political opposition’s narrative that the government is diplomatically inept and lacks international connections.
Further, while the government has attempted to secure more favorable terms from Washington in the context of a 20 percent unilateral tariff imposed by President Trump earlier this year and seek entry into the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a major regional free trade agreement, there have been concerns over its other decisions. For instance, opposition and civil society groups have criticized the lack of transparency surrounding some bilateral agreements, particularly the defense agreement signed with India earlier this year. Domestically, the agreement was widely seen as a move that placed Sri Lanka more firmly within India’s strategic embrace, especially given India’s role as the foremost external responder during the 2022 economic crisis and, more recently, the cyclone. This could potentially strain Sri Lanka’s ties with China, despite the JVP-led government’s otherwise close relations with the Chinese Communist Party due to their close ideological proximity. Meanwhile, China’s engagement appears to be shifting from a high-debt, infrastructure-heavy model toward more equity-based investments and joint ventures, especially in the SOE sector.
Against this backdrop, 2026 holds renewed challenges for Sri Lanka and the NPP government. Rising poverty exacerbated by the cyclone will challenge the government’s ability to bridge the gap between the state’s role in ensuring public welfare and public perceptions of its handling of this acute crisis. This is an important variable to watch, as grievances can be easily mobilized within the highly polarized context that both the NPP-led government and the opposition are actively shaping in the country. The NPP government’s defensive responses so far reflect a misguided belief that it occupies the moral high ground, deriving from the anti-corruption mandate it received from voters and the 2022 Aragalaya. However, such behavior risks enabling state overreach, seen in remarks by a government minister instructing the police to use cyclone-related emergency regulations to crack down on individuals posting defamatory comments about the president, a statement the president subsequently distanced himself from. All this domestic volatility at a time when the regional environment in the subcontinent is charged with revolution and as China and India compete to engage with Sri Lanka could be precarious. The new year will reveal whether the country’s attempts to achieve economic resilience succeed and how equitable the post-crisis recovery actually is.
Rajni Gamage and Harindra B Dassanayake
This article was originally published in South Asian Voices on 11 December 2025
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