Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition won a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, results showed Friday, as voters repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis.
Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.
His decision to immediately call polls and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition taking at least 123 seats in the 225-member assembly and on track to win many more.
The coalition had a monumental 62 percent of the vote among the more than three-quarters of ballots counted so far, while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s party was well behind with only 18 percent.
