Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition is on track for a landslide victory in snap elections, delivering the Marxist-leaning leader a powerful mandate to ease punishing austerity measures in the crisis-stricken nation.
With well over half of the ballots counted on Friday morning, Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) was far ahead of the opposition alliance Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) with 63 percent of the vote, according to early results from the country’s Election Commission.
The NPP had taken 97 seats in the 225-member parliament, compared with 26 seats for the SBJ, and was leading in all but one of 22 electoral districts, according to the results.
Voter turnout in Thursday’s vote was about 65 percent, according to the election commission, less than in September’s presidential election when nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot.
Dissanayake won September’s presidential poll riding a wave of popular discontent with austerity measures imposed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as a part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
With his coalition holding just three seats in the outgoing parliament, the 55-year-old leader of Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) called snap legislative elections in search of a fresh mandate.
Dissanayake had projected confidence ahead of the vote, telling local media on Thursday that he expected a “strong majority” in parliament.
“We believe that this is a crucial election that will mark a turning point in Sri Lanka,” Dissanayake told reporters after voting at a polling station in the capital.
“There is a change in Sri Lanka’s political culture that started in September, which must continue.”
Dissanayake, whose JVP spearheaded a bloody armed revolt against the government during the 1970s and 1980s, has pledged to fight corruption and seek “alternative means” to shore up the South Asian nation’s finances that impose less of a burden on the poor.
While Dissanayake heavily criticised the IMF deal during his presidential campaign, he has more recently expressed broad agreement with its objectives while emphasising the importance of taking care of Sri Lankans who are struggling.
Sri Lanka has been struggling to recover from its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948 following economic mismanagement by successive governments, the COVID-19 pandemic and 2019 Easter bombings.
In 2022, then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign after tens of thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets to protest sky-high inflation and fuel and food shortages.
Rajapaksa’s replacement Wickremesinghe, who finished third in September’s presidential election, oversaw a stabilising of the economy, but his government’s efforts to raise revenue, including by raising electricity bills and income taxes, proved unpopular with the public.
