What does Sri Lanka do now that the guard has changed?

It has long been maintained that the main factor causing social change in Sri Lanka is economic equality. However, prior liberal initiatives have mostly rejected the inclusion of economic rights in their demands for justice; can the NPP end this trend?

The leave that Sri Lankan Parliament employees had hoped to take this week has been canceled. Numerous security clearances need to be set up, desks need to be assigned, a parliamentary procedural workshop has to be planned, an information desk needs to be manned, and there are no hours to squander. The situation is all hands on deck.

These are the breaks when your nation decides to elect 160 or so new members to a 225-member house. A visually challenged individual will take the oath of office as a lawmaker for the first time. Staff at the Parliament, who is accustomed to creating materials in English, Tamil, and Sinhala, will now need to provide them in audio format.

In Sri Lanka, these are unique times. Even though the 225-member house has been elected using a proportional system since 1977, no party has been able to obtain two-thirds of the seats. With 159 MPs, or around 70% of the legislature, the National People's Power (NPP), a center-left party that was only in power since 2019, had just three in the previous parliament. This mandate has not been met, even by the Rajapaksas in their prime, just after Mahinda Rajapaksa's administration put an end to the 26-year civil war.

The influential Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists who had supported the Rajapaksas for decades essentially maintained that minorities should endure hardship because this was the only homeland of Sinhalese Buddhists, while Muslims had the Arab world and Tamils had Tamil Nadu.