COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was sworn in as president of Sri Lanka on Monday after an election in which voters rejected an old guard accused of plunging the country into economic trouble.
Dissanayake, 55, who ran as head of the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition, defeated opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and 36 other candidates in Saturday’s election.
Dissanayake got 5,740,179 votes, followed by Premadasa with 4,530,902 votes.
In his short speech, the new president pledged to work with others to address the country’s challenges.
“We deeply understand that we will find a challenging country,” said Dissanayake. “We do not believe that the government, one party or one person can solve this big problem.”
Just before Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena was sworn in, he resigned, opening the way for the new president to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet.
This election came at a time when the country was trying to recover from a very bad economic situation which led to political chaos.
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He is the ninth person to hold the powerful presidency of Sri Lanka, which was established in 1978 when a new constitution expanded the powers of the office.
Dissanayake’s coalition is led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or People’s Liberation Front, a Marxist group that fought two failed coups in the 1970s and 1980s to seize power through a socialist revolution. After its defeat, the JVP entered democratic politics in 1994 and has been in opposition ever since. However, they have supported several previous presidents and been part of governments briefly.
The NPP also includes groups representing academics, civil society, artists, lawyers and students.
Dissanayake was first elected to Parliament in 2000 and briefly held the agriculture and irrigation portfolio under President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 and was defeated by Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Dissanayake’s first big challenge will be making good on his campaign promise to ease the austerity measures imposed by his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe under a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund.
Wickremesinghe warned that any move to change the fundamentals of the agreement could delay the release of the fourth tranche of nearly three billion dollars.
That economic crisis was caused by excessive borrowing to finance projects that did not generate revenue, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s insistence on using scarce foreign currencies to finance its currency, the rupee.
It led to shortages of essential items such as food, medicine, cooking gas and fuel in 2022, triggering mass protests that forced then-president Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
Wickremesinghe, who was prime minister at the time, was elected by Parliament to fill out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term.
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