Marxist leader Anura Dissanayake wins Sri Lanka's presidential vote

Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Sunday was declared winner of the Sri Lankan presidential election by the country's Election Commission after an unprecedented second round of counting of votes.

IMAGE: Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the presidential candidate from National People's Power, speaks to the press after casting his vote at a polling station, on the day of the presidential election, in Colombo, on September 21, 2024. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Dissanayake, 56, the leader of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party's broader front National People's Power (NPP), defeated his closest rival Sajith Premadasa of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe was eliminated in the first round after he failed to become within the top two in the vote list.

NPP said Dissanayake will take oath on Monday. He will be the 9th president of the island nation.

After being defeated in the election, Wickremesinghe bid an emotional farewell to his 26-month tenure, marking the end of his presidency.

Addressing president-elect Dissanayake in a statement, the 75-year-old outgoing president said, “President Anura Dissanayake, I am handing over to your care the lovable child of Sri Lanka.”

He said that over the last two years he has safely carried the Sri Lanka child on the vine bridge, and "I wish that under your care as the new president, the child is carried safely to the end of his destination".

The election on Saturday was the first to be held since mass protests unseated Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022 after the country suffered an economic crisis.

Earlier, the Election Commission ordered a second round of counting after no candidate secured over 50 per cent votes needed to be declared the winner of Saturday's election.

In the first round of counting, Dissanayake topped the chart by securing 5.63 million votes or 42.31 per cent, followed by Opposition leader Premadasa with 4.36 million votes or 32.8 per cent and Wickremesinghe getting only 2.29 million votes or 17.27 per cent of the total votes polled.

No election in Sri Lanka has ever progressed to the second round of counting, as single candidates have always emerged as clear winners based on first-preference votes.

The accession of Dissanayake, who is popularly known as AKD, to the top post is a remarkable turnaround for his half-century-old party JVP, which had long remained on the margins. He is Sri Lanka's first-ever Marxist party leader to become head of state.

Dissanayake's anti-corruption message and his promise of a change in political culture resonated strongly with young voters who have been demanding system change since the economic crisis.

The NPP's popularity has risen sharply since 2022 after securing only around three per cent of the vote in the last presidential election in 2019.

Dissanayake, who hails from rural Thambuttegama in the North Central province, is a science graduate from the Colombo suburban Kelaniya University.

He joined the JVP, the mother party of the NPP, in 1987 at the height of their anti-Indian rebellion.

The JVP eliminated many activists of all democratic parties that supported the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987.

The Rajiv Gandhi-J R Jayawardena pact was the direct Indian intervention to solve the Tamil demand for political autonomy in the country. The JVP dubbed the Indian intervention as a betrayal of Sri Lanka's sovereignty.

However, Dissanayake's visit to India in February this year is seen as a change in the NPP leadership's approach towards India, expressing alignment with foreign investment interests.

With JVP's taking up democratic politics in the late 90s, Dissanayake got a place in the JVP central committee.

In the 2000 parliamentary election, he entered Parliament from the JVP. He has been an opposition livewire since 2001.

Dissanayake re-entered Parliament from the northwestern district of Kurunegala after the 2004 election in an alliance with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. He was appointed the minister of agriculture.

With the JVP leaving the government over a joint mechanism with the LLTE on sharing the 2004 Tsunami relief aid to the North, then controlled by the rebel group, Dissanayake became the parliamentary group leader of the JVP in 2008.

He was again elected to Parliament in the 2010 parliamentary election from the Colombo district and became his party's chief in 2014.

Having won again from Colombo in 2015, he became the chief opposition whip, a post he held till 2019.

In 2019, the JVP rebranded itself as the NPP, which embraced sections of Sri Lankan society that had never been enamoured towards the JVP given its violent past. The party had led two bloody rebellions in 1971 and between 1987 and 1990 to overthrow popular governments and faced brutal state crackdowns each time.

Dissanayake faces the immediate challenge of determining the future of economic reforms in the cash-strapped country.

Historically, the NPP has opposed International Monetary Fund programmes, but its recent endorsement of the current programme, although with a renegotiation of its terms, marks a significant shift.