Leftist Dissanayake wins Sri Lankan presidential election after historic runoff

A Marxist leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, has won Sri Lanka's presidential election, in what is being seen as a widespread rejection of the old political elite blamed for the country's continuing economic woes.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen

For the first time in Sri Lanka's history, the election went into a run-off yesterday after no candidate managed to get more than 50% of the votes. However, after second-choice votes were counted, Dissanayake was finally declared the winner in the evening. "This victory belongs to all of us," he said on X.

Dissanayake, 55, defeated the incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had been installed as president in 2022 after the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign and flee the country amid a popular uprising.

The victory of Dissanayake, the leader of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which is part of the broader National People's Power (NPP) coalition, was seen by many as a watershed moment and the party's first time in the presidential office.

The NPP had won just 3% of the votes in the last presidential election in 2019 while JVP holds just three seats in parliament. For many, the JVP had long been seen an unelectable radical fringe group owing to its past involvement in violent insurrections and targeted assassinations that left thousands dead in the 1980s.