Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition won a significant victory in snap legislative elections, as voters rejected establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis. Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept the September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.
His National People’s Power (NPP) coalition took at least 123 seats in the 225-member assembly and is on track to win many more. The coalition had a monumental 62% of the vote among the more than three-quarters of ballots counted so far, while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s party was well behind with only 18%.
In a sign of the magnitude of support for Dissanayake, his party won the most votes in the northern district of Jaffna, dominated by the island’s minority Tamil community, for the first time since independence from Britain in 1948. He said he expected “a strong majority” in parliament to press ahead with his platform after casting his ballot in Thursday’s poll.
Police said the nine-hour voting period passed without any incidents of violence, unlike most ballots of recent years, but three election workers including a police constable died due to illness while on duty. Voter turnout was estimated at under 70 percent, less than in September presidential polls that saw nearly 80 percent of Sri Lanka’s eligible voters cast a ballot.
Dissanayake stormed to the presidency after successfully distancing himself from establishment politicians blamed for steering the country to its 2022 economic crisis. The financial crash was the worst in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka’s history as an independent nation, sparking months-long shortages of food, fuel, and essential medicines. The resulting public anger culminated in the storming of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s compound, prompting his resignation and temporary exile.
Sri Lanka’s stock exchange has gained over 16% in the eight weeks since Dissanayake won the presidency. Poll monitors and analysts said Thursday’s election had failed to generate the level of enthusiasm or violence seen at previous polls.
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Source: NDTV
