Wimal Weerawansa, leader of the National Freedom Front (NFF) and former cabinet minister has been the chairman of the Supreme Lanka Coalition since its inception.
Between 2021 and 2022, however, the Rajapaksa government was beginning to lose much of its popularity. The ongoing economic crisis was only getting worse due to poor mismanagement by the government. By 2021, the foreign debt of Sri Lanka had risen to 101% of the nation's GDP. The government was also becoming highly nepotistic, with Rajapaksa family brothers Basil Rajapaksa as finance minister and Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister, and several more members of the Rajapaksa family holding prominent positions in the government.[8]
On 5 April, 2022, amidst increasingdiscontent with the Rajapaksa government, 16 MPs formerly aligned with the SLFPA government chose to remain independent in the parliament, along with several other key allies of the SLPP.[9][10][11] 15 of these MPs would go on to form the Supreme Lanka Coalition.
On 4 September, 2022, the group of 7 independent leftist political parties launched their new political alliance, the "Supreme Lanka Coalition", and the first general conference for the alliance was held on the same day.[1]
The coalition was launched only a few days after 13 SLPP MPs left the government and crossed over to the opposition as independent MPs, including SLPP chairman G. L. Peiris and SLPP MP Dullas Alahapperuma, who unsuccessfully challenged then-acting president Ranil Wickremesinghe to complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapkasa's term in the 2022 Sri Lankan presidential election.[12] The Supreme Lanka Coalition has considered the possibility of working with Alahapperuma.[13] The coalition intends to contest in the country's upcoming local elections as a standalone party, according to chairman Wimal Weerawansa.[14]
