In the Sri Lankan presidential election, 55-year-old leader of the leftist People’s Liberation Front party Anura Kumara Disanayake has been declared the winner of the election. Disanayake posted on X and wrote that this victory belongs to all of us.
In Sri Lanka’s presidential election, 55-year-old leader of the leftist People’s Liberation Front party Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been declared the winner. Dissanayake posted on X and wrote that this victory is for all of us. This was the first election in Sri Lanka after facing economic challenges and then political turmoil in the past years. Dissanayake played an important role in the movement against the government, and in this presidential election he got the fruits of the same support from the public, because in the last election Dissanayake’s party got only three percent votes. He is considered a supporter of China.
Announcing the election results, Sri Lanka’s Election Commission said that Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the People’s Liberation Front won the presidential election on Saturday with 42.31 percent of the votes. His opposition leader Sajith Premadasa came second with 32.76 percent of the votes. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took power after the country’s economic crisis, has not yet accepted defeat, but Foreign Minister Ali Sabry wrote on his social media handle that it is clear that Dissanayake has won the election. Ali Sabry said that although I campaigned heavily for Ranil Wickremesinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have taken their decision and I fully respect the public mandate for Dissanayake. Officials of the Sri Lankan Election Commission have said that Dissanayake will be sworn in at the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo on Monday morning.
Economic issues took over instead of religious issues
Economic issues dominated the entire presidential election in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, which faced its worst economic crisis two years ago, gave it the most importance as an election issue. On the deal made with the IMF, Dissanayake’s party said that we will not break this deal but we will definitely discuss it.
He said that we had promised in this election to reduce the income tax, which was doubled by Wickremesinghe, and along with this we will also reduce the tax on food and medicines.
No candidate got 50% votes
Earlier, in the first phase of counting of ballots, no candidate had got 50 percent votes, due to which there was so much delay in declaring the election results. Actually, Sri Lanka’s presidential election system allows voters to select three candidates on their ballot papers in the order of their preference. After this, at the time of counting of ballots, if no candidate gets a majority, then apart from the top two candidates, the other two are declared defeated. After which the votes of the losing candidates are checked and after matching them, they are added to the votes of both the candidates. After this, the candidate who gets the most votes is declared the winner.
The Rajapaksa family reached the margins of politics
In this election, Namal Rajapaksa, son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, came fourth with only 0.7 percent of the votes. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to flee the country after the public’s revolt. Before he fled the country, many members of the Rajapaksa family were part of politics.
An estimated 75 per cent of the more than 17 million eligible Sri Lankans peacefully exercised their democratic rights on Saturday to elect their head of state for the next five years. A record 38 candidates competed for the country’s top post in the first election since Sri Lanka was plunged into political turmoil following an economic collapse a little over two years ago. Then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee abroad in July 2022 as the country faced unprecedented food and fuel shortages and defaulted on its debts. Wickremesinghe has been running the country since then.
