Sri Lanka Election Results 2024: Anura Kumara Dissanayake vs. Sajith Premadasa – Who will be the next President?

Results of the 2024 Sri Lankan elections: Marxist-leaning MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa are leading the race to become Sri Lanka’s next president. As the vote count continues in Sri Lanka, the two politicians are in a neck-and-neck race.

On Saturday, September 21, the people of Sri Lanka elected a new president. These were the first elections in the island nation since it plunged into its worst economic crisis in 2022.

If the trends in the election results are to be believed, Anura Kumara Dissanayake is expected to replace incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over the government in Sri Lanka in July 2022 amid the political and economic crisis.

In the final vote count released at 7 a.m. on Sunday, 56-year-old Dissanayake received 727,000 votes, or 52 percent. His closest rival, 57-year-old opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, received 333,000 votes, or 23 percent. 75-year-old Wickremesinghe, on the other hand, was far behind with 235,000 votes, or 16 percent, news agency PTI reported.

Who is Anura Kumara Dissanayake?

Dissanayake, popularly known as AKD, leads two political parties: the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) and the National People’s Power (NPP). He is Sri Lanka’s Marxist-oriented politician. Dissanayake was born on November 24, 1968 and is currently a member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka.

Dissanayaka won a vote based on his promise to change Sri Lanka’s “corrupt” political culture. “Our country needs a new political culture,” he said after casting his vote on Saturday, according to AFP.

According to Reuters, Dissanayake’s party has traditionally supported greater government intervention and more free-market policies. He presented himself as a candidate of change and promised to dissolve parliament within 45 days of taking power in order to gain a new mandate for his policies in the parliamentary elections.

During his election campaign, Dissanayaka promised to renegotiate the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout package that Wickremesinghe negotiated last year after the government defaulted on its external debt.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s position on India

There are fears that Dissanayake will favour China as he has shown Marxist and Leninist leanings in the past. The Week reported that his party JVP’s “ideological leanings towards China have fuelled suspicions that China has been funding his campaigns since 2021”.

However, in an interview with Daily Mirror Sri Lanka, Dissanayake said: “In fact, someone has claimed that I spent Rs 70 million on foreign travel. I visited India and China on the invitation of their governments. The Indian and Chinese governments bore all the expenses.”

Meanwhile, Professor Anil Jayantha, a member of the NPP’s national executive committee, told The Week: “Our party and our chairman want to work with India. India is certainly our neighbour and a superpower. Recently we were invited by India to an agriculture summit. We visited Delhi and Kerala. Our chairman wants to negotiate with all the major powers to stabilise the Sri Lankan economy.”

(With contributions from agencies)