Sri Lanka polls: Anura Dissanayake falls short of 50% votes for outright win

Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has taken the lead in Sri Lanka’s presidential elections but has fallen short of the 50 per cent votes needed for an outright victory, with officials saying on Sunday (September 22) that it will take many more hours for the result to be formally declared.

Sri Lankan media reports said Dissanayake, who heads the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front), had bagged 40 per cent of the millions of votes polled on Saturday, leaving main Opposition leader Saith Premadasa with 34 per cent and incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe with 17.5 per cent of the votes.

Nationwide curfew

Former tourism minister Harin Fernando said Wickremesinghe, who has been the president since 2022, had told his staff to clear out the president’s office for a successor to take over.

Amid a nationwide curfew that started overnight to ensure peace on the streets, election officials were set to start counting the second and third preference votes of all candidates barring the two who on top — Dissanayake and Premadasa.

Any candidate has to cross the 50-per cent margin to be declared a winner. A failure would lead to officials counting the second and third preference votes of all other candidates except the two who finish on top.

Swearing in today?

Leaders of the JVP and the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance it leads, however, insist that Dissanayake, 55, will be the next president of the country of 22 million people and that he will take oath at a simple function either later Sunday or on Monday morning.

Although the election process is still on, key supporters of both Premadasa and Wickremesinghe have congratulated Dissanayake on his impending victory.

Rivals congratulate Dissanayake

Outgoing foreign minister Ali Sabry was among the first to do so.

He said although he heavily campaigned for Wickremasinghe, “the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayake”.

“I extend my sincere congratulations to Dissanayake and his team. Leading a country is no easy task, and I genuinely hope that their leadership brings Sri Lanka the peace, prosperity and stability it so deeply deserves,” he said.

Tamil MP hails JVP leader

Premadasa-backer and MP Harsha De Silva said, “It is now clear that Dissanayake will be the new president. In the spirit of democracy and goodwill, I called and wished my friend the best in the arduous road ahead.”

Tamil MP MA Sumanthiran, who had asked Tamils to vote for Premadasa, chipped in: “Congratulations (Dissanayake) for an impressive win, achieved without recourse to racial or religious chauvinism.”

Fiercely contested battle

The Saturday election was the most fiercely contested presidential battle since 1982 when the system was introduced. As many as 39 candidates were in the fray although one passed away before the balloting.

Both Dissanayake, son of a labourer, and Premadasa, son of former president Ranasinghe Premadasa, campaigned on a platform promising a better future for Sri Lankans who have been traumatized by unprecedented hardships since the economy collapsed two years ago.

Dissanayake and his cadre-based JVP, one of the youngest Marxist outfits in Asia, also promised to do away with the traditional political system and the endemic corruption that has come to plague Sri Lanka.

JVP exudes confidence

Dissanayake supporters pointed out that even if he fails to secure 50 per cent of the votes polled after the first round of counting, his leading the pack and inching towards a win is a dramatic turnaround for someone who polled a measly 3 per cent of votes in the last presidential election in 2019.

JVP general secretary Nihal Abheysinghe told the Daily Mirror on Sunday: “If the formal announcement (about victory) is made on time, the swearing in (of Dissanayake) could take place today.”

Although Dissanayake heads the National People’s Alliance, his real strength lies in the well-oiled outfit he heads: the JVP, one of the youngest Marxist parties in Asia.

The JVP unleashed two-armed insurrections in Sri Lanka in 1971 and 1988-89 to capture power but failed. The resultant bloodbath left tens of thousands of people dead on both sides.

What is JVP?

Ever since it embraced parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, the JVP has moved away from the politics of the gun. But it remained a party on the fringe of national politics until two years ago.

The stunning collapse of the Sri Lankan economy in 2022 led to widespread shortages of even essential goods, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets.

Wickremesinghe as president

The mass movement, known in Sinhalese as “aragalaya” (struggle), was led by the JVP and it led to the dramatic ouster of then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his flight out of Sri Lanka.

Members of the discredited ruling party quickly urged Wickremesinghe to take up the presidency for the rest of Rajapaksa’s term.

How JVP wooed the masses

Wickremesinghe policies led to visible improvement in people’s lives but the IMF-induced tax reforms did not help matters as it became – in the eyes of the JVP and others – a further burden on an impoverished society.

Dissanayake and his party campaigned all these months against what they called were the gross economic inequalities in Sri Lanka and for an end to gross and endemic corruption.