Leftist Dissanayake is the president-elect. Marxist in orientation Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the winner of the presidential election in Sri Lanka. This comes after an extraordinary tallying of second-preference ballots cast.
With 42.31% of the vote cast on Saturday, Marxist front-runner Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his party won the general elections, the election commission of Sri Lanka said late on Sunday.
For the first time in the nation’s history, officials in Sri Lanka held a second round of voting after leading contenders in the presidential contest could not obtain a majority of the first-preference votes cast.
Although Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa, the head of the opposition, had emerged victorious in the first round, none of them secured the required 50% of first-preference votes to be crowned the winner at the first count.
When counting voters’ second preferences, Premadasa gained ground, but Dissanayake’s early lead remained insurmountable as expected. Leftist Dissanayake declared president-elect
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According to findings on the website of the election commission, Premadasa’s party received 32.76% of the vote. After preferences into account, Dissanayake had little advantage of slightly more than 1.2 million votes.
In the island nation, slightly over 13.6 million votes were cast, translating to an almost 80% turnout.
With Sri Lanka’s instant run-off counting system, a party need merely hold the lead after accounting for other preferences, rather than needing to obtain 50% of the vote.
