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Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a neo-Marxist outsider candidate, has won the Sri Lankan presidency, delivering the nation’s biggest political upset since independence from Britain and throwing fresh doubt on its fragile IMF-backed debt restructuring.
After a hectic five-week campaign, the 55-year-old leftist beat incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took power in 2022 after the country defaulted on its foreign debt and its leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, and the main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, son of a former president.
Sri Lanka’s election commission officially declared Dissanayake, widely known by his initials AKD, the duly elected president around 7.30pm on Sunday.
In a statement on social media, he promised “a fresh start”.
“The dream we have nurtured for centuries is finally coming true. This achievement is not the result of any single person’s work, but the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of you,” he said.
Wickremesinghe said he was entrusting to his successor “the beloved child of Sri Lanka” and referenced his role in shepherding a $3bn loan agreement agreed last year that paved the way for ongoing debt restructuring.
“I followed the right path and saved people from hunger and sorrow,” he added. “I hope that the new president will also follow the right path and put an end to the remaining issues that the people were facing.”
Dissanayake emerged as the frontrunner early on Sunday, winning 42 per cent of the votes when they were first counted. The ballot went to a second count between the top two contenders — him and Premadasa — because of rules that allow voters to give second and third choices. These are taken into account if the top candidate’s support is under 50 per cent.
After the second count, Dissanayake emerged as the clear winner, with a final tally of 5,740,179 votes and Premadasa on 4,530,902.
Turnout — Sri Lanka’s first election since its 2022 economic meltdown and debt default — was 79 per cent, down slightly from 83 per cent in the last presidential election in 2019.
Harini Amarasuriya, a politician from Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, said the victory was “a vote against the traditional elite politics that was part of our culture” and had capitalised on frustration among voters over the corruption of the dynasts who have for decades taken turns ruling Sri Lanka.
“This is not just a transfer of power from one party to another,” she told the Financial Times. “It’s a real shift in power dynamics.”
The NPP would call for the dissolution of parliament and the holding of a new election “as soon as it’s constitutionally possible”, she added.
Dissanayake has pledged to continue with the IMF agreement, but alter some rigid conditions to grant more relief to the country’s 23mn people, about a quarter of whom are in poverty after two years of crisis and austerity.
In its manifesto the NPP called for a renegotiation of the IMF deal to make it “more palatable and strengthened”, with more focus on the poor. The group also wants to keep interest payments “at a bearable level” and has called for a detailed debt audit on foreign loans already taken out and for legal action against anyone who has “misappropriated” such loans.
Wickeremsinghe’s government said last week it had reached a draft agreement with holders of its $12.5bn defaulted bonds that “almost completes” the restructuring, but would still require a formal sign-off from the IMF and creditors.
Analysts said the outcome was a stunning result for a bloc with just three MPs in a parliament dominated by parties supported by legacy elites, including the Rajapaksa family. The former president fled in 2022 after the debt default and mass protests over a payments crisis that caused fuel shortages and power cuts.
“AKD benefited by a swing of all the votes of the Rajapaksa party toward him,” said commentator Kusal Perera.
In his campaign, Dissanayake vowed to end corruption and rid public life of scandal, while slashing the privileges of the ruling class such as generous pensions and car permits. He also pledged to reopen all rights cases involving the Rajapaksa regime.
The NPP has promised to abide by the IMF agreement, but analysts said the victory of a party with its roots in Marxism-Leninism marked a big political realignment. Dissanayake’s People’s Liberation Front or JVP, the founder party of what is now the NPP, began as a Marxist-Leninist party in 1965 and served in a coalition government in 2004-2005, but has never held power on its own.
The JVP has the former Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle as its logo and its headquarters building in the capital Colombo features a display case showing gifts and mementos from figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh.
An official portrait of Dissanayake shows him grinning and wearing a black beret reminiscent of the Cuban Revolution figure Che Guevara.