Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa go forward after no candidates gained 50% in first round.
The Sri Lankan presidential election will be decided in a runoff, the country’s election body has said, after the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50% of votes to be declared winner.
The Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake garnered the most votes in the first round of voting, with 39.5% of the counted ballots, while the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, finished second with 34%.
All the remaining candidates, including the incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who trailed in third with 17%, have been disqualified, the election commission told reporters on Sunday. A second round of counting using preferential votes will get under way to determine the winner.
This is Sri Lanka’s first election since its economy buckled in 2022 under a severe foreign exchange shortage, leaving it unable to pay for imports of essentials including fuel, medicine and cooking gas. Protests forced the then president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee and later resign. Wickremesinghe, who took over, led the heavily indebted country’s fragile economic recovery.
Pradeep Peiris, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, said: “The election result clearly shows the uprising that we witnessed in 2022 is not over.
“People have voted in line with those aspirations to have different political practices and political institutions. AKD (as Dissanayake is known) reflects these aspirations and people have rallied around him.”
Dissanayake, 55, presented himself as the candidate of change for those reeling under austerity measures linked to a $2.9bn (£2.2bn) International Monetary Fund bailout, promising to dissolve parliament within 45 days of taking office to obtain a fresh mandate for his policies in general elections.
He has worried investors with a manifesto pledging to slash taxes, which could affect the country’s ability to meet IMF fiscal targets, and to seek a $25bn debt rework. But during the campaign, he took a more conciliatory approach, saying any changes would be undertaken in consultation with the IMF and that he was committed to ensuring repayment of debt.
Premadasa also pledged to renegotiate the contours of the IMF deal.
Buttressed by the IMF deal, Sri Lanka’s economy has posted a tentative recovery. It is expected to grow this year for the first time in three years and inflation has collapsed to 0.5% from a crisis peak of 70%.
The continued high cost of living was a critical issue for many voters, and millions remain mired in poverty, with many pinning hopes of a better future on the next leader.
Voting was peaceful, although police declared a curfew across the country until noon local time (0630 GMT) on Sunday as a precaution while vote counting continued.
About 75% of the 17 million eligible voters cast their ballots, according to the commission.
Dissanayake, known for stirring speeches, ran as a candidate for the National People’s Power alliance, which includes his Marxist-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna (JVP) party. Traditionally, Dissanayake’s party has backed stronger state intervention, lower taxes and more closed-market economic policies.
Although JVP has only three seats in parliament, Dissanayake was boosted by his promises of tough anti-corruption measures and more policies to help people in poverty. He drew big crowds at rallies, calling on Sri Lankans to leave behind the suffering of the crisis.
Premadasa, 57, entered politics after his father, Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was elected as president in 1989, was killed in a suicide bombing in 1993. The younger Premadasa received 42% of the vote in 2019 to finish second, behind Rajapaksa, in the last presidential election.
Premadasa’s centre-left party has promised tax changes to reduce living costs. Support from farming communities in north and central Sri Lanka helped him close the gap on Dissanayake as counting progressed.
The winner will have to ensure Sri Lanka sticks with the IMF programme until 2027 to get its economy on a stable growth path, reassure markets, repay debt, attract investors and help a quarter of its people climb out of poverty.
