In Sri Lanka, the left-wing candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayaka has won the presidential election. As the election commission of the South Asian island state announced on Sunday, the 55-year-old Marxist 42.3 percent of the votes and thus beat the second-placed opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. The interim president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been in office for two years, came in a distant third.
Saturday’s election was de facto a vote on the strict austerity measures that have taken Sri Lanka from International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for aid. Dissanayaka will not cancel the deal with the IMF, but will renegotiate, a spokesman for his party, the People’s Liberation Front, told the AFP news agency before the official election results were announced. Dissanayaka wants to reduce income tax and VAT on food and medicine.
Dissanayaka’s Marxist party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s in which more than 80,000 people died. It received less than four percent of the vote in the most recent parliamentary election in 2020.
Saturday’s presidential election was the first in Sri Lanka since the mass protests at the height of the financial and economic crisis two years ago. The then head of state, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country after thousands of people stormed his office.
Since then, the situation in the country has stabilized under his successor Wickremesinghe, who was appointed by parliament. However, tax increases and other measures enacted as part of the IMF rescue package continue to burden the population. However, the authorities say that the presidential election was peaceful. (AFP)
