COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Marxist president-elect Anura Kumara Dissanayaka hails from a party behind two deadly insurrections, counts Che Guevara among his heroes and will now helm a country limping back from economic ruin.
The 55-year-old labourer’s son took 42.31 per cent of the ballots in Saturday’s (Sep 22) election, as voters punished establishment parties for a 2022 economic meltdown and hardships imposed by a stringent IMF bailout.
The financial crash was the worst in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka’s history as an independent nation since the end of British colonial rule in 1948.
“This victory belongs to all of us … Together, we stand ready to rewrite Sri Lankan history,” Dissanayaka wrote on social media platform X after the results were announced.
The president-elect and his People’s Liberation Front (JVP) saw their popularity surge after shortages of food, fuel and medicines at the peak of the crisis fuelled anger at government corruption and economic mismanagement.
“For the first time in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, governance will shift from the control of a few corrupt elite families to a people’s government,” he wrote in his party’s campaign manifesto.
