Colombo: In Sri Lanka's presidential election, 55-year-old leader of the leftist People's Liberation Front party Anura Kumara Disanayake has been declared the winner. He will be sworn in as the new President of Sri Lanka on Monday. Disanayake posted on X and wrote that this victory belongs to all of us.
This was the first election in Sri Lanka after facing economic challenges and then political chaos in the past years. Disanayake played an important role in the movement against the Sri Lankan government about one and a half years ago, in this presidential election he got the fruits of that support from the public, because in the last election Disanayake's party got only three percent votes. He is considered a supporter of China.
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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… pic.twitter.com/N7fBN1YbQA
— Anura Kumara Dissanayake (@anuradisanayake) September 22, 2024
According to the first round of vote counting, Kumara Dissanayake topped the first round of vote counting by getting 56 lakh 30 thousand votes i.e. 42.31 percent. Opposition leader of Samagi Jana Balawegaya Sajith Premadasa came in second place, who got 43 lakh 60 thousand votes i.e. 32.8 percent. Current President Ranil Wickremesinghe got only 22 lakh 90 thousand votes i.e. 17.27 percent.
Counting of second round happened for the first time
No election in Sri Lanka has ever reached a second round of counting, as a candidate has always emerged victorious based on first preference votes. The rise of 56-year-old Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, to the top post is a remarkable turnaround for the 50-year-old Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a party that had long been on the margins. He is the first leader of a Marxist party in Sri Lanka to become head of state.
3 percent votes were received in 2019
The NPP has seen a rapid rise in popularity since 2022. In the last presidential election in 2019, it got only about three percent of the votes. Dissanayake is from rural Thambuttegama in the North Central Province. He graduated in science from the University of Kelaniya, a suburb of Colombo. He joined the NPP's parent party JVP in 1987 at a time when its anti-India insurgency was at its peak.
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The JVP had killed many activists of all democratic parties who supported the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. The Rajiv Gandhi-J R Jayewardene Accord was a direct Indian intervention to resolve the Tamil demand for political autonomy in the country. The JVP had termed 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 attitude towards India, indicating a rapprochement with foreign investment interests.
-With agency input
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