Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has outlined the broad contours of his government’s new foreign policy, stating that he doesn’t want to be caught between India and China.
In an interview with The Monocle, Dissanayake said, “We don’t want to be sandwiched, especially between China and India. Both countries are valued friends and, under an NPP government, we expect them to become close partners.”
“We also want to maintain relations with the EU, the Middle East and Africa,” Dissanayake said in his interview with The Monocle which was conducted on September 3.
Dissanayake, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party’s broader front National People’s Power (NPP), defeated his closest rival Sajith Premadasa of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) in Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary elections.
The election was the first to be held since mass protests unseated Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022 after the country suffered an economic crisis.
Dissanayake won the election, obtaining 5.74 million votes, with 105,264 preferences. Premadasa got 4.53 million votes with 167,867 preferences.
In his interview, Dissanayake also added that one of the priorities of his government would be to save the country from economic crisis.
“Both the main opposition and the ruling party follow the same neoliberal economic model. Today, sadly, we are a bankrupt nation. We have an external debt of €34billion, poverty has increased and the price of essential goods has skyrocketed. Our priority is to save the country from this economic crisis,” he said.