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 back in 2022.
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is a Marxist–Leninist communist 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 1987–89 (UNP). The motive for both uprisings was to establish a socialist state.
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 Sri Lanka Freedom Party is one of the major and most well known political parties in Sri Lanka. It was founded by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike in 1951 and, since then, has been one of the two largest parties in the Sri Lankan political arena. It first came to power in 1956 and since then has been the predominant party in government on a number of occasions. The party is generally considered as having a democratic socialist or progressive economic agenda and is often associated with nationalist Sinhalese parties. The party follows a Non-Aligned foreign policy but always had close ties to socialist nations.
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).
Dullas Daham Kumara Alahapperuma is a Sri Lankan politician and founder and current leader of the Freedom People's Congress. Alahapperuma is also a former Cabinet Minister of Information and Mass Media and a current Member of Parliament from the Matara District.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, MP, also known by his initials AKD, is a Sri Lankan socialist politician. He is a Member of Parliament from the Colombo District, the current party leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the National People's Power. A former presidential candidate in 2019, he has been named as the National People's Power presidential candidate for the 2024 Sri Lankan presidential election.
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. 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. 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 became the home for members of the United People's Freedom Alliance loyal to its former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 5 August 2020 to elect 225 members to Sri Lanka's 16th Parliament. 16,263,885 people were eligible to vote in the election, 31.95% of whom were young voters.
Presidential elections were held in Sri Lanka on 16 November 2019. The incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena's term of office would have ended on 9 January 2020. This was the first presidential election in Sri Lanka where no sitting president, prime minister or opposition leader ran for president.
The Samagi Jana Balawegaya is a political alliance led by Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa. It is the largest opposition party in the Parliament of Sri Lanka since 2020.
The 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka is the current Parliament of Sri Lanka, with the membership determined by the results of the 2020 parliamentary election held on 5 August 2020. According to the Constitution of Sri Lanka the maximum legislative term of the parliament is 5 years from the first meeting.
Harini Amarasuriya is a Sri Lankan academic, rights activist, university lecturer and politician who is serving as a National List Member of Parliament for National People's Power party. She has also served as a senior lecturer at the Department of Social Studies of the Open University of Sri Lanka. She represents the National People's Power party since 2019. She is ideologically on the centre-left of the National People's Power Party; she considers herself to be a Liberal. Harini is well known for her researches on pressing issues such as youth unemployment, gender inequality, child protection and inefficiencies in Sri Lankan education system. She also currently runs works as a member of the Board of Directors of a Sri Lankan local NGO called, Nest.
An indirect presidential election was held in the Parliament of Sri Lanka on 20 July 2022 following the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on 14 July. The president of Sri Lanka was elected by the Parliament of Sri Lanka in a secret ballot to decide who would complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa's term. Candidates were nominated in the Parliament on 19 July in advance of the election the following day.
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka sometime between September and October 2024, according to the Constitution of Sri Lanka. Voters will elect a president for a term of five years. Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe is eligible to run for re-election.
The New Lanka Freedom Party is a political party in Sri Lanka which was founded by ex-SLFP politician Kumara Welgama in 2020. The party is known for its close ties with former president of Sri Lanka and former leader of the SLFP Chandrika Kumaratunga, who, like Welgama, has been a vocal critic of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
The Twenty-first Amendment (21A) to the Constitution of Sri Lanka was passed by the 225-member Sri Lankan Parliament with 179 voting in favor, 1 against and 45 abstained on 21 October 2022. The bill was passed with a two-third majority and it was reported that only one MP Sarath Weerasekara voted against the bill while 45 MPs were notably absent when the bill was passed in the parliament. The 21st Amendment was originally known as the 22nd Amendment in the political discourse and according to Newsfirst the said amendment would be added to Sri Lankan legislation as the 21st Amendment. The draft amendment was formulated during the critical juncture in Sri Lanka at a time when the country was reeling from massive economic crisis, political chaos and massive anti-government crackdowns. Major changes were made to the text of the draft of the 22nd amendment following the ousting of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The draft was initially presented to the parliament by Minister of Justice, Prison Affairs and Constitutional Reforms Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. in August 2022 and the cabinet granted approval for the draft. The 22nd Amendment was initially tabled in the Cabinet on 6 June 2022 by Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and the discussion on it had been adjourned on multiple occasions due to the failure to reach a consensus after series of disagreements.
The Freedom People's Congress is a political party in Sri Lanka founded by Dullas Alahapperuma, G. L. Peiris and several other former Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna MPs in 2022.
Local elections have not been held in Sri Lanka since 2018. Elections were originally scheduled to be held in 2022, but were postponed to 2023 due to the worsening economic crisis and instability in the country, before being postponed again several times by the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Currently, there is no official date scheduled for the elections.
