Anura Kumara Dissanayake shows his finger after voting at a polling station in Colombo on Sept. 21. His victory in Sri Lanka’s presidential election marks a sharp contrast to previous poor results by him and his political alliance. (Photo by Shinya Sawai)
COLOMBO — Leftist antiestablishment lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake won Saturday’s presidential election in Sri Lanka, shocking a political elite that has dominated power in the South Asian nation for nearly eight decades.
“This achievement is not the result of any single person’s work, but the collective efforts of thousands of you,” he said, on the verge of becoming the ninth executive president of Sri Lanka. Dissanayake is to be sworn in as president on Monday at a ceremony in Colombo, the commercial capital.
The Election Commission of Sri Lanka announced the victory of the 55-year-old leader of the small opposition National People’s Power (NPP) alliance on Sunday. More than 13 million out of 17 million eligible voters cast ballots.
Dissanayake’s triumph signals a sea change in the national mood toward the NPP, which has never led a government. The alliance has benefited from public rage over widespread political corruption and the country’s woes in the wake of an economic crisis that erupted in 2022.
During campaigning, Dissanayake promised to “revisit” reforms laid out by the International Monetary Fund in its conditions for a $3 billion bailout, hoping to ease the burden on millions of impoverished Sri Lankans.
Dissanayake’s victory contrasts sharply with poor showings by both him and his alliance in previous parliamentary and presidential elections. In the current parliament, the NPP managed to take only three seats in the 225-member legislature, while Dissanayake won just 3% of the vote at the last presidential election in 2019.
He appeared quick to grasp the significance of this moment, but has been equally quick to downplay praise for single-handedly triggering this political earthquake as a charismatic outsider who hails from humble beginnings in rural Sri Lanka.
Dissanayake won 42.31% of the votes in Saturday’s election, according to the elections commission.
But since no candidate received more than 50% of the votes in the first round, the election went into a second round of counting preference votes cast for Dissanayake and his closest rival, parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, who heads a center-left alliance. This was the first time in Sri Lanka’s nine presidential elections that a second-count runoff of the top two candidates was conducted.
The mood on Saturday when polling booths stayed open from 7 a.m. till 4 p.m. was calm, with lines forming early at some stations across the country. By noon, an estimated 40% of the votes had been cast. Valid votes totaled 13.319 million, the elections commission reported. The commission also said the campaign period and the polling day were notable for the absence of the outbreaks of violence that have erupted during past elections.
Dissanayake’s victory stems from the NPP’s long-term strategy to tap the antiestablishment rage and position itself as an outsider to the political class that had wielded power. Some Colombo-based diplomats compared the NPP to antiestablishment forces that have gained ground in other democracies in industrialized countries and even the Global South.
Analysts attribute Dissanayake’s win to the blueprint the NPP rolled out, which was novel yet also drew from its Marxist party antecedents. It caught off guard the older, larger established parties, familiar with money politics.
“Through patient, sustained village-level organizing, his campaign was able to channel the demands of the 2022 protest movement for ‘system change,'” said Alan Keenan, senior consultant on Sri Lanka for the International Crisis Group, based in London. “Dissanayake’s victory is particularly impressive, given his party’s previous failures to establish itself as a serious contender for power.”
source : asia.nikkei