Sri Lankan presidential election: Anura Kumara Dissanayaka declared winner

The leader of the left-wing coalition Anura Kumara Dissanayaka was declared the winner of Sri Lanka’s presidential election on Sunday, two years after a severe financial crisis forced the country into a brutal and unpopular austerity policy.

After the ballots were fully counted, this Marxist, who has largely converted to the market economy and who has renounced armed struggle, won 42.3% of the vote, the electoral commission announced on its website. He clearly beat the leader of the opposition in Parliament Sajith Premadasa (centre right), 57, credited with 32.7% of the vote, and the outgoing president Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, with 17.2%.

“This victory is everyone’s victory (…) together we are ready to rewrite the history of Sri Lanka,” Anura Kumara Dissanayaka said on the social network X as soon as his victory was declared. “The dream that we have carried for centuries has finally come true.” He is to be officially sworn in Monday morning, according to the electoral commission.

Silent since the announcement on Saturday evening of the first trends that gave him the loss, the incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe conceded his defeat this Sunday evening. “With great love and respect for this nation that I cherish, I place its future in the hands of the new president,” he assured in a statement. Sajith Premadasa’s entourage had conceded his defeat on Sunday morning, as soon as the first partial results were known.

Even before his victory was confirmed, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka said on Sunday that he would not “tear up” the $2.9 billion aid plan signed in 2023 with the IMF after long negotiations. “We will not cancel the IMF plan (…) our desire is to cooperate with the IMF and introduce certain amendments,” Bimal Ratnayake, a member of the political bureau of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s Marxist-inspired party, told AFP.

Exposing corruption

Throughout his campaign, ADK, as his camp calls him, has denounced the “corrupt” elites he sees as responsible for the chaos of 2022. He has also promised to reduce taxes and levies on food and medicine that weigh on the population. “For the first time in the history of independent Sri Lanka, power will pass from a few families of the corrupt elite to a government of the people,” he announced in his manifesto.

Sri Lanka experienced its worst economic crisis in history in 2022, which precipitated the fall of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was driven from his palace by protesters angry about inflation and shortages.

Crisis then austerity

Ranil Wickremesinghe, who came to power in the wake of this, has since pursued a policy of brutal austerity, increasing tax increases and drastic cuts in public spending.

Two years later, order has returned to the streets and the economy has picked up, although it is still very pale, the IMF warned. But Sri Lanka’s early recovery has come at the cost of worsening poverty, which now affects more than a quarter of its 22 million people, according to the World Bank.

Ranil Wickremesinghe was running for a second term with the sole agenda of continuing the island’s forced recovery. “History will judge my efforts but I can say with confidence that I did my best to stabilise the country during one of its darkest moments,” he said on Sunday evening.

Population fatigue

On Saturday, many voters in the capital Colombo and its suburbs expressed weariness, exhausted by two years of restrictions. “We need change in this country,” Mohamed Siraj Razik, 43, told AFP after casting his ballot. “The misuse of public funds for the benefit of the political class must stop.”

Like the left-wing candidate, opposition leader in parliament Sajith Premadasa, a former close associate of Ranil Wickremesinghe, had also pledged to extract concessions from the IMF. But the international institution seemed reluctant to accept any changes to the 2023 agreement. “Progress has been made, but the country is still far from being out of the rut,” warned the IMF’s communications chief, Julie Kozack, last week.

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