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Sri Lanka’s new leftist president has won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, installing his party for a five-year term and bolstering his mandate for change in a country still reeling from the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power coalition won 141 of 196 elected district seats in parliament, plus an additional 18 of the 29 seats allocated based on the party’s vote share, final results showed on Friday.
That gave it a total of 159 seats, up from just three previously, the largest-ever result since proportional representation was introduced in 1989 and well above the threshold for an absolute majority in Sri Lanka’s 225-seat parliament.
In September’s presidential election, Dissanayake defeated Sri Lanka’s legacy political camps in one of the island nation’s biggest political upsets in decades. The anti-corruption campaigner and political outsider is now charged with finalising the restructuring of the country’s $25.2bn external debt.
The rise of Dissanayake, a 55-year-old Marxist widely known by his initials AKD, comes in the wake of an economic crisis in 2022 that plunged the country into default and forced its then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee into exile.
Thursday’s election, the first since that crisis, resulted in NPP gains in both the ethnic Sinhalese-majority south and the minority Tamil-dominated northern and eastern provinces. In a first in Sri Lanka’s electoral history, it also won in the Jaffna district, a traditionally Tamil stronghold, pointing to a nationwide mandate for the leftist bloc.
After Dissanayake’s presidential victory, the NPP dissolved the assembly almost a year ahead of schedule. “Give us a parliament with no rogues, make sure you vote to fill it with our members,” he had told rallies.
Analysts said the results indicated that Sri Lankans were prepared to give Dissanayake time to deliver on anti-graft promises. The new leader has vowed to prosecute corrupt former politicians, who he accuses of embezzling public funds and abusing political power, though he has not yet taken action.
“The people seem to have voted on the belief that you can’t fix the economy without fixing corruption and addressing corruption,” said Nishan de Mel, executive director of Verité Research, a Colombo-based think-tank.
Dissanayake is a former student revolutionary from a working-class family, who has in the past voiced admiration for communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Fidel Castro.
Observers said the NPP’s victory would strengthen his hand as he strives to finalise a debt restructuring deal with Sri Lanka’s commercial creditors. In his presidential campaign, Dissanayake had promised to renegotiate some features of the roughly $3bn IMF-led bailout that he inherited from his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe.
But he has little room to manoeuvre under the tough spending curbs imposed by Sri Lanka’s creditors. He has also yet to make good on pledges to raise public sector wages and cut electricity bills.
“The government was clearly at a disadvantage, with having to face the reality of the IMF reforms,” said Shihar Aneez, an independent political analyst.
Colombo is awaiting the fourth tranche of IMF support in March to help fund its 2025 budget, but the release of the funds will depend on a review by the multilateral lender. The IMF is due to begin work with the new government this week.