Marxist Dissanayake wins Sri Lanka presidential election as voters reject old guard

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Marxist lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s presidential election, the election commission announced Sunday, after voters rejected the political old guard widely blamed for plunging the South Asian nation into economic ruin.

Dissanayake, who made himself popular among young people with his pro-working class, anti-political elite campaign, won the election over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and incumbent liberal President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took power two years ago after the economy hit rock bottom.

Electoral Commission data shows that Dissanayake received 5,740,179 votes, followed by Premadasa with 4,530,902.

The elections held on Saturday were crucial as the country tries to recover from the worst economic crisis in history and the resulting political upheaval.

“This achievement is not the result of one person’s work, but the collective efforts of hundreds of thousands of you. Your dedication has brought us this far and for that I am deeply grateful. This victory belongs to all of us,” Dissanayake said in a message on X.

Outgoing President Wickremesinghe congratulated Dissanayake in a video statement and said he hoped he would continue economic recovery efforts successfully. The election was a virtual referendum on Wickremesinghe’s leadership, including the restructuring of Sri Lanka’s debt under an International Monetary Fund bailout after the country 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 change the basis of the agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly $3 billion, which is crucial to maintaining stability.

“I have successfully discharged the responsibility that history has placed on my shoulders. I have been able to save my fatherland from bankruptcy within a short period of two years,” Wickremesinghe said.

Under Wickremesinghe, inflation has fallen and foreign reserves and the local currency have strengthened. Economic growth is forecast to be 2% this year after a 7% contraction in 2022. But Sri Lankans still struggle with high taxes and living costs.

“During our lives we have suffered many hardships and now our children are also suffering. We must put an end to this misery,” said Ranuka Priyanthi, 58, who voted for Dissanayake. She said she expects him to rebuild the country that has been devastated by economic mismanagement and corruption.

The immediate challenge for Dissanayake would be to stabilise the economy “in light of the concerns felt by business and financial groups over his Marxist and revolutionary background,” said political analyst Jehan Perera.

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

The U.S. State Department congratulated Dissanayake on his victory. “This election is a testament to the strength of Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions and the commitment of its citizens to shaping their future through peaceful and democratic means,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

This was a strong result for Dissanayake, who won just over 3% of the vote in the previous presidential election in 2019.

His National People’s Power coalition is led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or People’s Liberation Front, a Marxist party that led two failed armed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s to seize power through a socialist revolution. After its defeat, the JVP entered democratic politics in 1994 and has played a key role in the opposition. However, it has supported several presidents and briefly served in governments.

The NPP group also includes academics, social movements, artists, lawyers and students.

Dissanayake was first elected to parliament in 2000 and briefly held the portfolio of minister of agriculture and irrigation under then-President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He first ran for president in 2019, losing to Rajapaksa, who was ousted two years later amid the economic crisis.

The government announced Thursday that it has cleared the final hurdle in debt restructuring by reaching an agreement in principle with private bondholders. At the time of its default, Sri Lanka’s local and external debt totaled $83 billion. The government says it has now restructured more than $17 billion.

The crisis was largely the result of excessive borrowing for projects that did not generate revenue. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s insistence on using scarce foreign reserves to support the currency, the rupee, contributed to the economy’s freefall.