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 into 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.Outgoing President Wickremesinghe in a video statement congratulated Dissanayake and said he hoped he will carry forward the economic recovery efforts successfully.The election was a virtual referendum on Wickremesinghe’s leadership, including restructuring Sri Lanka’s debt under an International Monetary Fund bailout 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.“I successfully completed the responsibility that history put on my shoulders.I was able to rescue my motherland from bankruptcy within short period of two years,” Wickremesinghe said.Under Wickremesinghe, inflation has dropped and foreign reserves and the loca...