Nationwide Folks’s Energy chief Anura Kumara Dissanayake secures presidential victory in Sri Lanka’s 2024 presidential election on Sunday. | Picture credit score: AP
Sri Lanka’s election fee on Sunday (22 September 2024) declared a beforehand marginal politician the nation’s president-elect after a vote marred by discontent over the island nation’s response to an unprecedented monetary disaster.
“Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the 55-year-old chief of the Folks’s Liberation Entrance, gained the presidency with 42.31 p.c of the vote in Saturday’s election,” the fee mentioned.
Opposition chief Sajith Premadasa got here in second with 32.76%. Outgoing President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took workplace on the peak of the 2022 financial collapse and imposed harsh austerity insurance policies underneath the phrases of an IMF bailout, got here a distant third with 17.27%.
Wickremesinghe has but to concede defeat, however Overseas Minister Ali Sabry mentioned it was clear Dissanayake had gained.
“Whereas I campaigned laborious for President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the individuals of Sri Lanka have made their selection and I absolutely respect his mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayake,” Sabry mentioned on social media.
“Dissanayake might be sworn in on Monday (September 23, 2024) morning on the colonial-era Presidential Secretariat in Colombo,” election fee officers mentioned.
Settlement with the IMF
Financial points dominated the eight-week marketing campaign, with widespread public anger on the hardships endured for the reason that peak of the disaster two years in the past.
“Dissanayake wouldn’t ‘break’ the settlement with the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF), however would search to change it,” mentioned a member of the occasion’s politburo. AFP.
“It’s a binding doc, however there’s a provision for renegotiation,” mentioned Bimal Ratnayake.
He mentioned Dissanayake had pledged to cut back revenue taxes that have been doubled by Wickremesinghe and to chop gross sales taxes on meals and medicines.
“We consider we will embrace these reductions in this system and proceed with the four-year rescue program,” he mentioned.
Mr Dissanayake’s once-fringe Marxist occasion led two failed uprisings within the Seventies and Eighties that left greater than 80,000 individuals lifeless.
He gained lower than 4 p.c of the vote over the last parliamentary elections in 2020.
However the Sri Lanka disaster has proved to be a chance for Dissanayake, who has seen a surge in help primarily based on his promise to alter the island’s “corrupt” political tradition. “Our nation wants a brand new political tradition,” he mentioned after casting his vote on Saturday (September 21, 2024).
About 76% of Sri Lanka’s 17.1 million eligible voters forged their ballots in Saturday’s (September 21, 2024) election.
Mr Dissanayake’s occasion sought to reassure India that any administration he led wouldn’t be caught up in a geopolitical rivalry between its northern neighbour and China, the nation’s greatest lender.
New Delhi has expressed concern over what it sees as Beijing’s rising affect in Sri Lanka, which lies on very important transport routes throughout the Indian Ocean.
“Sri Lankan territory is not going to be used towards some other nation,” Ratnayake mentioned. AFP“We’re absolutely conscious of the geopolitical scenario in our area, however we is not going to take part,” he added.
Austerity rejected
Mr. Wickremesinghe sought re-election to proceed adjustment measures that stabilized the financial system and ended months of shortages of meals, gasoline and drugs throughout Sri Lanka’s financial disaster.
His two years in workplace restored calm to the streets after recession-fuelled civil unrest led hundreds to storm the compound of his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who then fled the nation.
However tax hikes and different measures imposed by Wickremesinghe underneath the $2.9 billion IMF bailout he secured final yr have left hundreds of thousands struggling to make ends meet.
Official information confirmed Sri Lanka’s poverty fee doubled to 25% between 2021 and 2022, including greater than 2.5 million individuals to these already residing on lower than $3.65 a day.
Hundreds of cops have been deployed to watch voting on Saturday (22 September 2024).
A brief curfew was imposed after polls closed, regardless of police reporting no violence throughout or after the vote. No celebratory occasions or gatherings are permitted till every week after the ultimate outcomes are declared.
Revealed – September 22, 2024 07:31 pm IST