COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissa­nayake thanked voters on Friday for delivering his leftist coalition a landslide victory in snap parliamentary elections that repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis.

Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.

His decision to immediately call polls nearly 10 months ahead of schedule and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with his National Peoples Power (NPP) coalition taking 159 seats in the 225-member assembly.

The result delivered the NPP a comfortable two-thirds majority that will allow it to push constitutional amendments, including for its proposed plan to scrap the presidency altogether and make the prime minister the head of government.

“Thank you to all who voted for a renaissance,” Dissanayake said in a brief statement on social media platform X.

The coalition won a monumental 61.5 per cent of the vote while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s party was well behind with 17.6 per cent.

In a sign of the magnitude of support for Dissanayake, his party won the most votes in the northern district of Jaffna, dominated by the island’s minority Tamil community, for the first time since independence from Britain in 1948.

Voter turnout was estimated at under 70 per cent, less than the 80 per cent of eligible voters who cast a ballot in September’s presidential polls.

‘Governed by thieves’

Dissanayake, the 55-year-old son of a labourer, had been an MP for nearly 25 years and was briefly an agriculture minister, but his NPP coalition held just three seats in the outgoing assembly.

He stormed to the presidency after successfully distancing himself from successive leaders blamed for steering the country to its 2022 economic crisis.

The financial crash was the worst in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka’s history as an independent nation, sparking months-long shortages of food, fuel and essential medicines.

The resulting public anger culminated in the storming of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s compound, prompting his resignation and temporary exile.

Dissanayake’s pledge to change a “corrupt” political culture has resonated with millions of Sri Lankans struggling to make ends meet following tax hikes and other austerity measures imposed to repair the nation’s finances.

“Very happy about this victory,” voter Nilusha Nilmini said after the scale of the win became clear.

“All this time, the country was governed by thieves, robbers and corrupt people. I am very happy that the crooks are out and a clean government has been established.”

Dissanayake’s JVP party, the main constituent in the NPP coalition, led two insurrections in 1971 and 1987 that resulted in 80,000 deaths.

Party general secretary Tilvin Silva told reporters after final results were announced that they would press ahead with promised reforms to scrap Sri Lanka’s powerful executive presidency, first introduced in 1978.

“We will implement the constitutional reforms we promised,” Silva said.

The JVP have pledged to revert Sri Lanka to full parliamentary rule, with the prime minister serving as the head of government.

Investor confidence

Portraits of communist luminaries including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Fidel Castro hang in Dissanayake’s JVP headquarters in the capital.

Since his rise to popularity, however, he has softened some policies, saying he believes in an open economy and is not totally opposed to privatisation.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2024