COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Sunday claimed he had won Sri Lanka’s presidential election.
“This victory belongs to all of us,” Dissanayake said in a post on X.
Official results were expected to be announced, but according to tallies released by the Election Commission, Dissanayake secured 42% of the votes followed by opposition leader Sajith Premadasa with 32%. Incumbent liberal President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over the country two years ago after its economy hit rock bottom, came distant a third and secured 17% of the votes.
Campaigning by Dissanayake in favor of working class and against political elite made him popular among youth as the country seeks to recover from the worst economic crisis in its history and the resulting political upheaval.
Neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote.
The Sri Lankan election system allows voters to select three candidates on their ballots in the order of their preference. If no candidate secures a majority, the top two will be retained and the ballots of the eliminated candidates will be checked for preferences given to either of the top two candidates, and those votes will be added to their respective tallies. The candidate with the highest number of votes after that will be declared the winner.
PHOTOS: Marxist lawmaker Anura Dissanayake claims victory in Sri Lanka's presidential election
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, which has been accused of pushing Sri Lanka toward economic instability.
Wickremesinghe’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry congratulated Dissanayake on the social platform X and said he hopes he will “lead with a commitment to transparency, integrity, and the long-term good of the country.”
“I wish Mr. Dissanayake and his team every success in their efforts to lead Sri Lanka forward,” Sabry added.
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, 55, leads the left-leaning coalition National People’s Power, an umbrella of civil society groups, professionals, Buddhist clergy and students.
The government announced Thursday that it passed the final hurdle in debt restructuring by reaching an agreement in principle with private bond holders.
At the time of its default, Sri Lanka’s local and foreign debt totaled $83 billion. The government says it has now restructured more than $17 billion.
Despite a significant improvement in key economic figures, Sri Lankans are struggling with high taxes and living costs.
Both Premadasa and Dissanayake say they will renegotiate the IMF deal to make austerity measures more bearable. Wickremesinghe has 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.
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis resulted largely from excessive borrowing on projects that did not generate revenue. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s insistence on using scarce foreign reserves to prop up the currency, the rupee, contributed to the economy’s free fall.
The economic collapse brought a severe shortage of essentials such as medicine, food, cooking gas and fuel, with people spending days waiting in line to obtain them. It led to rioting in which protesters took over key buildings including the president’s house, his office and the prime minister’s office, forcing then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
Wickremesinghe was elected by a parliamentary vote in July 2022 to cover the remainder of Rajapaksa’s five-year term.
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