Sri Lankan President Dissanayaka opts for smaller Cabinet with fresh faces

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Monday appointed a 21-member Cabinet in the new NPP government, keeping with his pre-election promise to streamline the governance system and ease the burden on taxpayers.

The National People's Power (NPP) has been advocating a smaller government to reduce costs for the public. Since the NPP won the presidential election in September, the government functioned with just 3 ministers, including the President.

As per the island nation's Constitution, there is a provision for appointing a 30-member Cabinet.

Dissanayaka retained the finance and defence portfolios, while appointing 12 new parliament members to key positions and entrusting eight veteran members, who have served since 2000, with significant responsibilities.

Among the fresh faces in the Cabinet are five academic professors.

Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya who holds the education portfolio and Saroja Savithri Paulraj who has the women's and child affairs portfolio are the two women members in the Cabinet. Paulraj, a minority Tamil from the Sinhala majority south, was involved in the party's long struggle.

A significant feature of the swearing-in ceremony was the fisheries minister Ramalingam Chandrasekaran, who took his oath in Tamil, highlighting the representation of the minority community in the new government.

The new parliament will convene on Thursday.

The NPP led by Dissanayake swept the parliamentary elections held on Thursday by winning a two-thirds majority. It also dominated the Jaffna electoral district - the heartland of the nation’s Tamil minority. The NPP won a near 62 per cent of the vote 2/3rd majority of 159 seats in the 225-member assembly, a feat which has no parallels since 1989.

Addressing the new Cabinet, Dissanayake said, “We will not abuse the large power given to us, make no mistake about it. We trust you will uphold that there will be limits to the power.”

Dissanayaka said most of his members are not new to politics despite being new to the parliament and the Cabinet.

“For decades you fought hard in our battles to gain power. We were judged before the elections on our correct political slogans and political path. But from now on, we will be judged as to how we act true to our slogans,” he stressed.

The NPP's victory in the parliamentary election has created many firsts and records. It received 61.56 per cent of the total votes counted. The previous best was 60.33 per cent by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's party in the 2010 election. The NPP won the highest number of polling divisions, 152 out of 168, the previous best was Rajapaksa’s 136.

It also won the highest number of districts 21 out of 22, the previous best was 19 by Rajapaksa in 2010. It has the highest number of 159 parliamentary seats over Rajapaksa’s 145 in 2020.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the mother party of the NPP, had led two violent armed struggles in 1971 and 1987-90 to overthrow the then government. The party entered the democratic mainstream in 1994 and never looked back since then while shedding its violent past, including a campaign against India's interventions in the minority Tamil issue in Sri Lanka.