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

Nation puts faith in Anura Kumara Dissanayake to fight corruption and bolster fragile economy after the worst financial crisis in decades.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been declared the winner of the presidential election, according to the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.

The Marxist-leaning Dissanayake, 55, leader of the People’s Liberation Front alliance, won the presidency with 42.31 percent of the vote in Saturday’s election, the commission said on Sunday.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa took second place with 32.76 percent of the vote.

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 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.

According to election commission officials, the president-elect Dissanayake is expected to be sworn in on Monday at the colonial-era President Secretariat in the main city of Colombo.

Declaring his victory, Dissanayake called for unity of all Sri Lankans, including the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslim communities, adding that a “new renaissance will rise from this shared strength and vision”.

“The dream we have nurtured for centuries is finally coming true. 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,” he said in a post on X.

Reporting from Colombo, Al Jazeera’s Minelle