Marxist outsider takes oath as new Sri Lanka president

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist-leaning politician and leader of the People’s Liberation Front – JVP or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna – has been sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new president after winning the election with 42.31 per cent of the vote.

- MAROOSHA MUZAFFAR

Yesterday, he pledged to address the country’s complex challenges, restore public confidence in politics, and tackle corruption. Mr Dissanayake, 55, led the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition and secured victory over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and 36 other candidates in Saturday’s election.

He garnered 5,740,179 votes, while Mr Premadasa received 4,530,902 votes, and has pledged to work with other parties to turn around Sri Lanka’s severe economic troubles. “We have deeply understood that we are going to get a challenging country,” he said in a brief speech after assuming office on Monday. “We don’t believe that a government, a single party or an individual would be able to resolve this deep crisis.”

His victory follows a period of both political and fiscal turmoil that led to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation amid mass protests in 2022. Mr Rajapaksa fled the country and was replaced by his prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also ran in Saturday’s election but finished a distant third.

Mr Dissanayake’s meteoric rise from securing only 3 per cent of the vote in 2019 elevates his half-century-old leftist JVP party to an unprecedented role in the political landscape of Sri Lanka, which has been completely reshaped by grassroots protests over the past two years.

He was first elected to the parliament in 2000 and briefly served as the agriculture and irrigation minister under the then president Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 but lost to Mr Rajapaksa.