Anura Kumara Dissanayake is new Sri Lanka President, calls win ‘vote for change’

Sri Lanka’s left-leaning leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, won the presidential election on Sunday, calling it a “vote for change.” This was the first election since the country’s economic collapse in 2022. Sri Lankans cast their ballots on Saturday to elect a new president.

Dissanayake, who does not have a political background, led the polls from the start, defeating incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. He received 5.6 million or 42.3 per cent of the votes, a significant jump from the 3 per cent he received in the 2019 presidential election.

The election was also a test for Wickremesinghe, who helped the country recover from its financial crisis in 2022. However, the austerity measures that were key to this recovery hindered his bid to return to office. He finished third with 17 per cent of the vote.

This was the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that the presidential election went to a second round of counting because the top two candidates did not receive the required 50 per cent of the votes to be declared the winner.