Sri Lanka is a unitary multi-party semi-presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Sri Lanka is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The United National Party is a centre-right political party in Sri Lanka. The UNP has served as the country's ruling party, or as part of its governing coalition, for 38 of the country's 74 years of independence, including the periods 1947–1956, 1965–1970, 1977–1994, 2001–2004 and 2015–2019. The party also controlled the executive presidency from its formation in 1978 until 1994 and again from 2022 to 2024.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 2 April 2004. The ruling United National Party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated, winning only eighty two seats in the 225-member Sri Lankan parliament. The opposition United People's Freedom Alliance won 105 seats. While this was eight seats short of an absolute majority, the Alliance was able to form a government.
Sri Lanka elects on the national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. Sri Lanka has a multi-party system, with two dominant political parties. All elections are administered by the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is a leftist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was formerly a revolutionary movement and was involved in two armed uprisings against the government of Sri Lanka: once in 1971 (SLFP), and another in 1987–1989 (UNP). The motive for both uprisings was to establish a socialist state. Since then the JVP has entered mainstream democratic politics and has updated its ideology, abandoning some of its original Marxist policies such as the abolition of private property, and moderating its rhetoric. The JVP has been led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake since 2014.
The United People's Freedom Alliance was a political alliance in Sri Lanka founded by former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2004 and dissolved by former Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena in 2019.
The Jathika Nidahas Peramuna (JNP) or National Freedom Front (NFF) is a political party in Sri Lanka which was formed by ten JVP parliamentarians led by Wimal Weerawansa, as a breakaway group of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, commonly referred to by his initials AKD, is a Sri Lankan politician who has been the tenth and current president of Sri Lanka since 2024. Dissanayake is the first Sri Lankan president to be elected in a second round of vote counting, and the first elected president not from Sri Lanka's traditional political parties.
Kuragamage Don Lalkantha is a Sri Lankan politician who has served as the Minister of Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation since 2024. A member of National People's Power and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Kandy Electoral District in 2024 Sri Lankan parliamentary election. He was formerly member of the parliament for Anuradhapura District from 2001 to 2010.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 8 and 20 April 2010, to elect 225 members to Sri Lanka's 14th Parliament. 14,088,500 Sri Lankans were eligible to vote in the election at 11,102 polling stations. It was the first general election to be held in Sri Lanka following the conclusion of the civil war which lasted 26 years.
The New Democratic Front is a political alliance in Sri Lanka. It was formed as a political party in 1995 after Srimani Athulathmudali, widow of assassinated politician Lalith Athulathmudali, split from the Democratic United National Front.
Vasudeva Nanayakkara is a Sri Lankan left-wing politician, Member of Parliament and presidential candidate in the 1982 and 1999 Sri Lankan presidential elections.
The Batalanda detention centre was an alleged detention centre located within the Batalanda Housing Scheme of the State Fertiliser Corporation in the village of Butalanda, situated in the Biyagama Electorate. It was used by the Counter Subversive Unit of the Sri Lanka Police during the 1987–89 JVP insurrection to detain persons who were linked to or suspected to have links to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), as part of the counterinsurgency campaign launched by the United National Party (UNP) government led by President Ranasinghe Premadasa.
The Sri Lanka People's Front, commonly known by its Sinhalese name Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), is a political party in Sri Lanka. It was the ruling party in Sri Lanka from 2019 to 2022 and was the largest party in parliament from 2020 to 2024. Previously a minor political party known as the Sri Lanka National Front (SLNF) and Our Sri Lanka Freedom Front (OSLFF), it was relaunched in 2016 as the SLPP and the party became the base for members of the United People's Freedom Alliance loyal to its former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Rajapaksa family.
The 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election was the 8th presidential election, held on 16 November 2019. Incumbent president Maithripala Sirisena did not run for a second term. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, was the candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and was endorsed by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Sajith Premadasa, son of former president Ranasinghe Premadasa and deputy leader of the United National Party was the candidate of the ruling party.
The 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka was the meeting of the Parliament of Sri Lanka with its membership determined by the results of the 2020 parliamentary election held on 5 August 2020. The parliament met for the first time on 20 August 2020 and was dissolved on 24 September 2024.
Wasantha Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan politician, trade union leader, and activist, known for his prominent roles in student politics, parliamentary representation, and labor movement advocacy. He currently serves as the Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development, having assumed office on 18 November 2024 under the National People's Power (NPP) government.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 14 November 2024 to elect 225 members to the new parliament. The 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka was dissolved on 24 September 2024. The submission of nominations for the election commenced on 4 October and concluded on 11 October 2024 at 12:00 SLST.
Mesthree Tilvin Silva is a Sri Lankan Marxist politician serving as the General Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and a founding member of the NPP. Silva has played a significant role in shaping the JVP's policies and strategies, particularly focusing on social justice, anti-corruption, and economic reforms. He has been described as one the closet allies of the president Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
NPP Kottasha Sabha are political councils established by the National People's Power (NPP) in Sri Lanka at the constituency level. The NPP is a coalition formed in 2019 and led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a prominent socialist party in Sri Lanka. The NPP created Kottasha Sabhas to engage with and mobilize local communities across the country, promoting a platform focused on anti-corruption, social justice, and economic reform, as well as bridging ethnic and communal divides.
