How a Leftist Delivered Sri Lanka’s Biggest Political Jolt in Decades

Two of the front-runners in Sri Lanka’s presidential election were the sons of former presidents. A third contender, the incumbent, was the nephew and political heir of yet another president.

But when Anura Kumara Dissanayake arrived at the election commission office late on Sunday to accept his victory in the vote, he cut a different figure, his sleeves rolled up and his beige shirt tucked into simple blue jeans.

His sweep to power is the biggest jolt to Sri Lanka’s political landscape in decades — an emphatic rejection of the political elite that had long ruled the island nation. He rode a wave of discontent that crested in 2022 with a popular uprising over an economic collapse and continued until the first presidential election since then.

Mr. Dissanayake, 55, offered his broad leftist coalition as the best hope for a different political culture. He cast it as an alternative for a country with an aspiring middle class that is hungry for competent economic leadership that the old political system, rife with nepotism and corruption, did not provide.

His personal story resonated: The son of a farmer and a homemaker, he worked as a tutor, sold cigarettes on trains and hawked vegetables in his village market before committing to politics. He vowed to clean up the patronage networks that had enriched a small elite while the fortunes of the majority stagnated and then plummeted as the country’s economy disintegrated.