Sri Lanka has destroyed its two-party system or, more accurately, the two-party system has destroyed Sri Lanka and then itself. In the end, both parties merged into one corruption and the electorate finally threw out the whole disgusting mess. The whole country is nominally Red now, after being either Green or Blue since Independence. I don't know what the future holds, but it's a historic moment.

A Brief History

As a brief history, Sri Lanka started with one uniparty (literally the United National Party), until DS Senanayake fell off a horse and all hell broke loose. As DS Senanayake was falling off this horse, the uniparty split into a duoparty (Green and Blue), which it remained until 2010. @nuuuwan has a great illustration of the process.

As you can see, the duoparty persisted (with a small streak of Red) until 2005, when the feudal cucklord Ranil Wickremesinghe lost an election but refused to give up the Green Party to anyone else. Note that you never see the UNP running for President (the only office that really matters) again. It's all NDF, and then nothing.

In 2015, Ranil destroyed the Blue party also. He convinced a defective to defect from the Blues, and that idiot actually won. They kicked out the natural leader of the Blues (Mahinda) out, and the Blue party fell apart. After this, the UPFA never ran again. It sorta became the SLPP (Maroon), which pissed the bed in 2022 and disintegrated.

After that government fell, Ranil somehow house-of-cardsed his way into an illegitimate and despised Presidency, reassembling the Uniparty for one last round of looting. When elections were finally called in 2024, Ranil (Orange) came a distant 3rd, and refugees from the Green finished 2nd. The Reds (NPP/JVP) won. In the Parliamentary election that followed, the Reds cleaned house almost completely. The uniparty that became a duoparty that became a uniparty again was historically dustbinned. An entire corrupt caste was kicked out by unfortunately reformed commies. And so here we are today.

Why

The greatest weakness of the Blue and Green parties was not the Reds but their own leadership. Greed split the uniparty and eventually shattered the duoparty into nothing. This left no major parties the majority wanted, but they lumbered on in a global phenomenon I call Zombie Democracy, where a government is obviously dead but lumbers on anyways, eating brains.

After the abortive 2022 revolution we call the Aragalaya (struggle), the most revolting people in the country (the generational MPs) held an election amongst themselves and voted for two more years of corruption, with the IMF and foreign bankers at the top of the heap. For two miserable years our children have been hungry while they feasted. But when we finally held an election of the people, they were almost all kicked out. 100% of the original cabinet and most of the corrupt MPs. Guys who had been in Parliament for decades and were passing it on to their sons, they're all gone, mashallah.

The sudden beneficiary of this was the Reds, who had been preparing for this for decades. As Trotsky said of the Russian Revolution, external circumstances and the internal contradictions of capitalism produce the opportunity for revolution, but you still have to do the work. As Trot said,

But our entire epoch and, above all, the present crisis imperiously command the proletariat: “Seize power!” If, however, the party of the working class, in spite of favorable conditions, reveals itself incapable of leading the proletariat to the seizure of power, the life of society will continue necessarily upon capitalist foundations — until a new crisis, a new war, perhaps until the complete disintegration of European civilization.”

The Reds—the JVP, also known as NPP—had been trying to take power since the 1970s, first violently then silently, and they believed in themselves when few did. Then, when the two-parties thoroughly fucked themselves and the country, they struck. They ran someone both young and experienced for President and won. Then they ran a slate of young, diverse candidates across the island and united north and south for the first time in the first non-racist election I remember. Whatever race you are, Sri Lankans are all poor now, and we finally elected a party of working-class people, not aristocrats yelling about minorities.

And so here we are. What lessons does that have for you? How does it help you overthrow a two-party system that has grown oppressive and embarrassing in equal measure? I don't know. The more I learn about Sri Lanka the less I understand it and I do not recommend it to casual observers. I guess three tips would be 1) go back in time and start 40 years ago 2) have a very effective Electoral Commission 3) and crash your country so bad you have to change drivers.

If you're asking how to 'fix' abominations like America or Germany or the UK or Australia, however, you must adjust your expectations. As Goldfinger told James Bond. “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” These countries deserve to have their two party states thrown out, and their states also. There is no saving the reconstructed Nazis of the White Empire. Not just Republicans and Democrats, but bad ideas like America and the UK need to go in the historical dustbin entirely. I don't know if you heard, but we're cleaning up.