Landslide victory for new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake

New Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party won a landslide victory on Friday after snap legislative elections.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake shows his inked finger as he leaves a polling station after casting his ballot in Sri Lanka. Picture: AFP

New Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party won a landslide victory on Friday after snap legislative elections.

Mr Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) coalition party had a monumental 62 per cent of the vote among the more than three-quarters of ballots counted so far, while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s party was well behind with only 18 per cent.

The results showed the NPP, which had only three seats in the outgoing parliament, comfortably leading in almost every constituency in the 225-member house.

Mr Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, took power in September’s presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover the country’s stolen assets, two years after an unprecedented economic meltdown, when then-president ­Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted.

His decision to immediately call polls and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with the NPP coalition taking at least 123 seats in the 225-member assembly and on track to win many more.

On Thursday, the 55-year-old said he expected “a strong majority” in parliament to press ahead with his platform.

Election officials and security personnel transport sealed ballot boxes to a counting centre at the end of voting in Sri Lanka's legislative elections in Colombo on Thursday. Picture: AFP

“We believe that this is a ­crucial election that will mark a turning point in Sri Lanka,” Mr Dissanayake after casting his ballot at a polling station in the capital.

“At this election, the NPP ­expects a mandate for a very strong majority in parliament,” he said referring to the coalition party in which his JVP, or ­People’s Liberation Front, is the main constituent.

Police said the nine-hour voting period passed without any ­incidents of violence, unlike most ballots of recent years, but three election workers including a police constable had died due to illness while on duty. Voter turnout was estimated at under 70 per cent, less than in the September presidential polls when nearly 80 per cent of Sri Lanka’s eligible voters cast a ballot.

“I expect a new country, a new government that is friendly towards the people,” 70-year-old pensioner Milton Gankandage, among the first to vote in Colombo’s Wellawatte district, said.

“Previous rulers deceived us. We need a new set of rulers who will develop the country.”

Mr Dissanayake had been an MP for nearly 25 years and was briefly an agriculture minister.

He stormed to the presidency after successfully distancing himself from establishment politicians blamed for steering the country to its worst economic crisis in 2022.

His JVP party led two insurrections in 1971 and 1987, leading to at least 80,000 deaths, but Mr Dissanayake was sworn in after an election described as one of the island nation’s most peaceful.

Despite previous promises to renegotiate a controversial $US2.9bn International Monetary Fund bailout secured by his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mr Dissanayake has chosen to maintain the agreement with the international lender.

The country’s main private sector lobby, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, is tacitly supporting Dissanayake and his program.

An IMF delegation is in ­Colombo to review economic progress before releasing the next $US330m tranche of the bailout loan.

AFP