By Uditha Jayasinghe and Sudipto Ganguly
COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lanka elected Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its new president on Sunday, placing religion within the 55-year-old’s pledge to battle corruption and bolster a fragile financial restoration following its worst monetary disaster in a long time.
Dissanayake, who doesn’t possess political lineage like a few of his rivals within the presidential election, led from begin to end through the counting of ballots, knocking out incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition chief Sajith Premadasa to grow to be Sri Lanka’s tenth president.
The election was additionally a referendum on Wickremesinghe, who led the closely indebted nation’s fragile financial restoration from a meltdown in 2022 however the austerity measures that had been key to this restoration hindered his bid to return to workplace. He completed third with 17% of the vote.
Dissanayake polled 5.6 million or 42.3% of the votes, a large enhance to the three% he managed within the final presidential election in 2019. Premadasa was second at 32.8% after the primary spherical of counting of ballots on Sunday.
It was the primary time in Sri Lanka’s historical past that the presidential race was determined by a second spherical of counting after the highest two candidates did not win the necessary 50% of votes to be declared winner.
