Sri Lanka’s new president dissolves parliament and calls for legislative elections in November

September 24 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, winner of the presidential elections held on Saturday, signed a decree on Tuesday dissolving Parliament and calling for legislative elections on November 14.

Nominations for the general election will be accepted from October 4 to 11. Dissanayake, who was sworn in on the eve of the election, has indicated that parliament should open on November 21, the Daily Mirror reported.

Dissanayake won 42.31 percent of direct votes in Saturday’s presidential election as leader of the communist People’s Liberation Front (PLF) party and candidate of the National People’s Power, a coalition of leftist political parties and groups backed by protesters who forced former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign.

The rise to power of Dissanayake’s party – a Marxist party that led two armed rebellions in 1971 and 1987 before being integrated into the party system – has been based on popular demands such as the fight against corruption and the break with the island’s traditional party system.