Marxist Anura Dissanayake wins Sri Lankan presidential election

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s election commission declared Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake the winner of the country’s presidential election Sunday, after voters rejected the political old guard widely blamed for driving the South Asian nation into economic ruin.

Dissanayake, whose pro-working-class, anti-elite campaign made him popular with young people and brought him victory over Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa The current liberal president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, took power in the country two years ago after its economy hit rock bottom.

Election Commission data showed that Dissanayake got 5,740,179 votes, followed by Premadasa with 4,530,902 votes.

The elections held on Saturday were decisive as The country is seeking recovery. From the worst economic crisis in its history and The resulting political unrest.

In a video statement, outgoing President Wickremesinghe congratulated Dissanayake and said he hoped he would successfully continue economic recovery efforts. 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, has said he will renegotiate the IMF deal to make austerity measures more bearable. Wickremesinghe has warned that any move to change the fundamentals of the deal could delay the release of a fourth tranche of about $3 billion, which is crucial to maintaining stability.

“I have successfully fulfilled the responsibility that history has placed on me. I have been able to save my country from bankruptcy in a short period of two years,” Wickremesinghe said.

Under Wickremesinghe, inflation has fallen, foreign reserves and the local currency have strengthened. The economy is expected to grow by 2% this year after contracting by 7% in 2022. But Sri Lankans still struggle with high taxes and the cost of living.

“We have suffered so much throughout our lives and now our children are also suffering. We need to put an end to this misery,” said Ranuka Priyanthi, 58, who voted for Dissanayake. She said she expected him to rebuild a country devastated by economic mismanagement and corruption.

Political analyst Jehan Perera said Dissanayake’s immediate challenge was to stabilize the economy “in the face of concerns among business and financial groups about his Marxist and revolutionary background.”

He said Dissanayake represented the spirit of the 2022 uprising in which angry Sri Lankans ousted then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and called for “regime change” and “new faces in politics.”

The US State Department congratulated Dissanayake on his victory. “These elections are a testament to the strength of Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions and the commitment of its citizens to shape their future through peaceful, democratic means,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The result was a strong performance for Dissanayake, who won more than 3% of the vote in the previous presidential election in 2019.

His coalition, the National People’s Power, is led by the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna, or People’s Liberation Front, a Marxist party that launched two failed armed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s to seize power through socialist revolution. After its defeat, the People’s Liberation Front entered democratic politics in 1994 and played a major role in the opposition. However, it has supported several presidents and been part of governments for brief periods.

The NPP caucus also includes academics, civil society movements, artists, lawyers and students.

Dissanayake was first elected to Parliament in 2000 and briefly served as Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation under then President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 and lost to Rajapaksa, who was ousted by the economic crisis two years later.

The government announced on Thursday that it had passed the final hurdle in Debt restructuring through agreement In principle, Sri Lanka has $83 billion in domestic and foreign debt. The government says it has restructured more than $17 billion.