The question is now being asked — quietly in corridors, cautiously in public, and increasingly loudly among supporters: is the National People’s Power governing with one mind, or two instincts pulling in opposite directions?
The National People’s Power (NPP) did not win power as a conventional party. It arrived as a movement — propelled by public anger, moral clarity, and a promise to dismantle a political system seen as corrupt, centralised and unaccountable. At its core sat the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), disciplined, battle-hardened, and ideologically anchored.
But governing is exposing a reality that campaigning concealed: the NPP now houses two distinct governing instincts. Not factions in open revolt. Not rival leaders sharpening knives. But two competing ideas of how power should be used once obtained.
The first instinct: govern, steady, survive
This current — visible among technocrats, professionals, and newer NPP allies — prioritises stability. Its argument is simple: Sri Lanka is emerging from economic collapse; reckless reform could spook markets, unsettle institutions, and fracture fragile confidence. Sequence matters. Fix the economy first. Reform the constitution next. Keep the system running while preparing to change it.
This camp sees restraint not as betrayal, but as responsibility.
The second instinct: reform fast, or lose the mandate
Rooted in long-standing JVP cadres and movement activists, the other instinct is less patient. To them, delay is danger. The abolition of the executive presidency was not a footnote — it was a promise. Every month that passes with presidential powers intact, they argue, chips away at the NPP’s moral authority.
Their fear is not instability, but assimilation — that the movement becomes indistinguishable from the system it vowed to dismantle.
Why this matters now
This is not an academic debate. It is playing out most sharply around constitutional reform— the very issue that gave the NPP its ethical edge. While the government reiterates its commitment to a new constitution, there is no draft, no timetable, no referendum date. Power remains concentrated in the executive — now wielded by the very leader who promised to dismantle it.
For supporters who voted for systemic change, that contradiction is becoming harder to ignore.
Is this a split?
No. There is no evidence of an organised rebellion or a leadership challenge against President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Party discipline remains intact. The parliamentary group is unified.
But unity is not the same as unanimity.
What exists is a fault line of instinct — between those who believe power must be used sparingly until conditions are right, and those who believe power unused is power surrendered.
The real risk
The danger for the NPP is not collapse. It is quiet
demobilisation. Movements do not always fall apart; sometimes they simply lose belief. Supporters stop defending. Activists stop mobilising. Voters begin to say, “Give them time” — the most dangerous sentence in Sri Lankan politics.
Sri Lanka’s recent history offers a warning: every leader who promised to abolish the executive presidency eventually found reasons not to — until the presidency abolished them instead.
The front-page question
Can the NPP hold together these two instincts long enough to deliver both stability andstructural reform? Or will caution slowly hollow out the mandate that brought it to power?
For now, the NPP governs as one. But beneath the surface, the argument over what to do with power has already begun.
And in Sri Lanka, that argument rarely stays quiet for long.
