Sri Lanka elects Marxist-leaning Dissanayake as president to fix economy

Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been declared the winner of the island nation’s presidential election, according to the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.
The Marxist-leaning Dissanayake, 55, leader of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) party and leader of the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, won the presidency with 42.31 percent of the vote in the election, the commission said on Sunday.
Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa took second place with 32.76 percent of the vote held on Saturday.
Outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe – who took office at the peak of the 2022 economic collapse and imposed tough austerity policies per the terms of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout – took a distant third place with 17.27 percent of the votes polled.
It was the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that the presidential race was decided by a second round of counting after the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50 percent of votes.
Dissanayake has promised to root out corruption, improve the lives of all and bring to book those he says robbed the country.
It’s an astounding change of fortunes for someone who polled just 3% at the last election in 2019.

Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez reports from Colombo.
Ahilan Kadirgamar is a political economist and a senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka.
He joins us from Jaffna to discuss the latest updates.

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