Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Sri Lanka's presidential election, according to data released by the Election Commission on Sunday, as voters rejected the old political guard that has been widely accused of pushing the South Asian nation toward economic ruin. Dissanayake, whose pro-working class and anti-political elite campaigning made him popular among youth, secured victory over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and incumbent liberal President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over the country two years ago after its economy hit bottom, the AP reports. Dissanayake received 5,740,179 votes, followed by Premadasa with 4,530,902, Election Commission data showed.
The election held Saturday was crucial as the country seeks to recover from the worst economic crisis in its history and the resulting political upheaval. "This achievement is not the result of any single person's work, but the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of you," Dissanayake said in a post on X, adding, "This victory belongs to all of us." The 55-year-old leads the left-leaning coalition National People's Power, an umbrella of civil society groups, professionals, Buddhist clergy, and students. The election was a virtual referendum on Wickremesinghe's leadership of a fragile recovery, including restructuring Sri Lanka's debt under an International Monetary Fund bailout program after it defaulted in 2022.
Dissanayake had said he would renegotiate the IMF deal to make austerity measures more bearable, per the AP. Wickremesinghe had warned that any move to alter the basics of the agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly $3 billion that is crucial to maintaining stability. Neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote. Under the Sri Lankan system that allows voters to select three candidates in the order of their preference, the top two are retained, and the ballots of the eliminated candidates are checked for preferences given to either of the top two vote-getters. The one with the higher number of votes is declared the winner. It was a strong showing for Dissanayake, who won just over 3% of votes in a previous presidential election in 2019, and suggests voters are fatigued with the old political guard.
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