Dissanayake’s coalition has more than two-thirds of Parliament

The National People’s Power alliance won 159 of the 225 seats. The Marxist-inspired leader, elected president in September after decades of family dynasties in power, promised to seek “alternative means” to sustain the country’s finances. The International Monetary Fund had called for austerity measures in exchange for a bailout loan.

Colombo () – The left-wing coalition of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won the parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka and won 159 of 225 seats with 63% of the votes. The National People’s Power (NPP) overtook the opposition alliance Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) led by Sajith Premadasa, son of former president Ranasinghe Premadasa, which won 40 seats.

Many former deputies did not stand for re-election or preferred to run as independents, fragmenting the opposition. The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, which represents the Tamil ethnic minority, won seven seats, while the New Democratic Front and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (the party of the Rajapaksa family, in power until 2022) won three and two seats respectively. .

“We believe that this is a crucial election that will mark a turning point in Sri Lanka,” Dissanayake himself said yesterday. “Thank you to everyone who voted for a revival,” he wrote on X today in Sinhala, Tamil and English, the three languages ​​spoken in Sri Lanka. In the outgoing assembly, Dissanayake’s Marxist-inspired Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party, engaged in armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, had only three seats.

Dissanayake assumed the presidency in September promising to ease the austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome the economic crisis. In 2022, Sri Lanka declared bankruptcy and the ensuing street protests forced the resignation of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a member of one of the families that dominated the country’s political scene for years. Economist Ranil Wickremesinghe, responsible for signing the agreements with the IMF that required increasing income, was appointed in his place. Consequently, measures were implemented to increase bills and income taxes, which immediately proved unpopular.

Elected with 42% of the votes in September, Dissanayake dissolved Parliament because he did not consider it “in accordance with what the people want.” During the presidential campaign he had declared that he would fight corruption and seek “alternative means” to sustain the nation’s finances, in an effort to place fewer burdens on the poor. Although he agreed with the need to rebuild the economy and help people in difficulty, he had criticized the agreements with the IMF.

In the last four years the percentage of people who are below the poverty line has reached 25.9% and the World Bank’s growth forecasts are only 2.2% for 2024. Various surveys have highlighted that The economy remains voters’ first concern.

“Now that the president and the new leaders have obtained the votes to control Parliament, they must maintain the trust of the citizens,” he tells an elderly businessman from Colombo, the capital. “We are very happy for our children, because they will benefit from this new government, but only if it runs the country with one goal, that is, ‘for the people,'” said Vinothen Rasaiaha, a 45-year-old Tamil.

A press release from the Christian Women’s Movement also notes that those who played a role in the NPP’s victory must now ensure that the government manages the country without betraying the trust of the population, especially the Tamil communities settled in the north and in the east of the country, which has suffered three decades of civil war.