Sri Lanka elects marxist lawmaker as next president after political, economic upheaval

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Sri Lanka’s presidential election, the Election Commission announced Sunday, after 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.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.Your commitment has brought us this far, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

This victory belongs to all of us,” Dissanayake said in a post on X.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, had said he would renegotiate the IMF deal to make austerity measures more bearable.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 election 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 highest number of votes is declared the winner.It was a strong s...