Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s election as President of Sri Lanka is an event of the times in Sri Lanka where such public weariness from economic hardships had set in regarding the old order of entrenched leaders and scions of dynastic political families that conditions were screaming for change. Unusual as it sounds, the strong showing by a Marxist leader of the hardcore Sinhalese party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) reveals that people were fed up with leadership that had led to a crippling national economic crisis..
