Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake dissolved Parliament late Tuesday, September 24 and called for a parliamentary election in less than two months in an effort to consolidate power after his weekend election victory.
A government notification said that Parliament was dissolved effective midnight Tuesday, and that the parliamentary election was set for November 14, in an expected move that Dissanayake had vowed to take during his election campaign.
Dissanayake’s party holds only three seats in the 225-member Parliament and the snap election could help him take control of the chamber while his approval ratings remain intact following his win in Saturday's polling.
The dissolution came hours after Dissanayake swore in a female lawmaker in his coalition as his prime minister, making her the country’s first woman to head the government in 24 years.
Harini Amarasuriya, 54, a university lecturer and activist, comes from a similar background as Dissanayake and both are members of the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition, which remains in the opposition in Parliament.
His victory in Saturday’s election over ex-President Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa came as Sri Lankans rejected the old political guard whom they blamed for pushing the country into an unprecedented economic crisis.
The last woman to serve as prime minister, the second most-powerful position after the president, was Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She was also the world’s first female head of government when she took up the post in 1960, and served three terms until 2000.
Dissanayake's lack of a majority makes it difficult for him to appoint a fully-fledged Cabinet, and he had vowed during the campaign to dissolve Parliament and call a snap election. The present Parliament’s five-year term ends next August.
Dissanayake’s first major challenge will be to act on his campaign promise to ease the crushing austerity measures imposed by his predecessor Wickremesinghe under a relief agreement with the International Monetary Fund, after Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt.
Wickremesinghe has warned that any move to alter the basics of the bailout agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly $3 billion.
Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of staggering economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with 2019 terrorism attacks devastated its important tourism industry.