evidence: In his first address to the nation on September 25, the presidential candidate of Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power coalition, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was sworn in as President on September 23, did a Vajpayee: he read out from a prepared text, haltingly, and seemed completely out of sorts. [...] Even during the aragalaya (struggle) in 2022 against the gross mismanagement of the economy, Dissanayake was not a prominent face. Although it was suspected that the party he leads, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), had a role in the agitations, Dissanayake was comfortable allowing the "organic" protest to gather pace and direction on its own and did not seek to take ownership. [...] Also Read | Anura Kumara Dissanayake is Sri Lanka’s new President