Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition has achieved a landslide victory in snap parliamentary elections, delivering the self-described Marxist leader a powerful mandate to fight poverty and corruption in the crisis-stricken nation.
The Election Commission of Sri Lanka said on Friday that Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) coalition secured a two-thirds majority in parliament, winning 159 of 225 seats, a huge lead on opposition alliance Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), which won 40 seats.
Dissanayake, a 55-year-old veteran politician, was elected president on September 21 with 42 percent of the vote, in a rejection of traditional political parties that have governed the island nation since independence from British rule in 1948.
His party’s victory on Friday vindicated his decision to immediately call elections and secure parliamentary backing for his plans to combat corruption and recover stolen assets, two years after a financial crash led to months-long shortages of food, fuel and essential medicines.
Reporting from Colombo, Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez said voters had said “enough is enough”, voting overwhelmingly “to take a chance on the NPP”.
The vote, she said, marked a rejection of “the same old faces, the same old parties [that] have been hoodwinking us for too long now”.
Change
In July, public anger about the economic crisis culminated in the storming of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s compound, prompting his resignation and temporary exile.
The Rajapaksa clan’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party, whose cohort of brothers gave the country two presidents during a dozen years in power and had 145 seats in the outgoing legislature, was virtually wiped out in this week’s vote, winning just two seats.
Dissanayake’s pledge to change a “corrupt” political culture had 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.
Upon being elected president, he had promised to renegotiate a controversial $2.9bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout secured by his predecessor, but has since maintained the country’s agreement with the lender. However, his party’s newly won majority could see him reopen talks.
While he was in opposition, Dissanayake argued against the enormous powers of the executive presidency and its links to abuse of power. His party’s majority will now allow him to begin the process of abolishing the position, though analysts say this is unlikely to be a priority.
Commenting on the coalition’s majority, Al Jazeera’s Fernandez said: “There are observers who say too much power is something for concern, but the president had said that … voters should fill the parliament with his representatives [who] could give effect to the change that they were promising.”
Anura Kumara Dissanayake meets party supporters after voting in parliamentary elections in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on November 14, 2024 [Thilina Kaluthotage/Reuters]
Electoral shift
Dissanayake, who hails from the Sinhala-majority town of Galewela, 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.
Marking a major shift in the country’s electoral landscape, his coalition won the Jaffna district, the heartland of ethnic Tamils in the north, who have long been suspicious of Sinhalese leaders.
Ethnic Tamil rebels fought an unsuccessful civil war in 1983-2009 to create a separate homeland, saying they were being marginalized by governments controlled by Sinhalese.
According to conservative United Nations estimates, more than 100,000 people were killed in the conflict.
Voter turnout in this week’s election was estimated at less than 70 percent, below the 80 percent of eligible voters who cast a ballot in September’s presidential polls.