How to beat the NPP In 2029: BluePrints and Bloc parties

IF the NPP Government maintains the current IMF-driven economic trajectory, by 2029, a combined liberal political movement, led by Sajith Premadasa, under the UNP’s ‘Elephant’ Symbol, without the baggage of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, would comfortably defeat the incumbent President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

- By Kusum Wijetilleke

Tn 2028/29, full external debt repayments will recommence just as the election cycle heats up. Constitutionally, the presidential election precedes the parliamentary, which favours the NPP because AKD remains far more popular than his party and Government. The electorate’s goodwill toward AKD defects from the administration’s lacklustre legislative performance, with policy reversals and the absence of a bold economic agenda to match its manifesto and the President's own rhetoric.

AKD delivered another cautious, incremental Budget mirroring the very IMF-framing he once campaigned to overturn. Budget 2026 is effectively a continuation of Budget 2025: record capital expenditures that will not materialise; education spending at 1% of GDP and inadequate allocations for health, transport, and social protections.

Budget 2026 also offers no relief for SMEs or low-income households: core constituencies who expected a progressive economic transformation. The middle-class, already among the most heavily taxed in South Asia, paying some of the highest regional prices for food, essentials, and energy, will receive no meaningful relief either.

The NPP had every opportunity to pursue an alternative economic path that did not require abandoning crucial reforms. This was always a false dichotomy: renegotiating the program does not equal abandoning reforms. In reality, whether at the CEB or SriLankan Airlines, reforms have slowed or been reversed anyway, while the program apparently remains on track.