The left-wing National People Power (NPP) party led by Sri Lankan President Anudha Kumara Dissanayake won a landslide victory in early parliamentary elections. The victory gave Marxist President Dissanayake a mandate to relax strict austerity policies. This information is known from the report of Al Jazeera based in Qatar.
Sri Lanka's parliamentary election votes were taken simultaneously across the country on Thursday. Counting begins immediately after polling is over. As of writing this report on Friday, most of the ballots have been counted. And in this Dissanayake's party NPP is far ahead of the opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) with 62 percent votes.
Preliminary results announced by Sri Lanka's Election Commission showed the NPP winning 141 seats in the 225-member parliament. They are leading in all but one of Sri Lanka's 22 constituencies. Former President Ranasinghe Premadasa's son Sajith Premadasa's party SJB won 35 seats in this election. The party representing the Tamil ethnic group Ilangkai Tamil Arasu Kacchi won 7 seats. New Democratic Front and Sri Lanka Padujana Peramuna got 3 and 2 seats respectively.
Voter turnout in Thursday's polls was around 65 percent. That's significantly lower than the nearly 80 percent voter turnout in September's presidential election. Dissanayake won the September presidential election. He gained wide public support by opposing then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe's strict austerity policies under the IMF bailout.
In the previous parliament Anudha's party got only 3 seats. A confident Dissanayake told local media on Thursday ahead of the vote that he expects an absolute majority in parliament. After casting his vote, he said, 'We think this is an important election for Sri Lanka, which will mark a new turning point.'
Anudha Dissanayake led a bloody insurgency in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s. This time, he has promised to find alternative ways to fight corruption and stabilize the economy before becoming president. During the election campaign he criticized the IMF agreement but later expressed support for its goals. However, he emphasized that steps should be taken with less pressure on the poor.
It should be noted that Sri Lanka is currently facing the biggest economic crisis since independence in 1948. Past mismanagement, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2019 Easter attacks have made the situation even more difficult. In 2022, the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign after massive public protests and left the country. Although Rajapaksa's succession brought economic stability to Wickramasinghe, tax increases and other measures played an active role in losing his popular support.
