Sri Lanka’s Marxist-leaning Dissanayake declared president-elect

Sri Lanka’s election commission formally announced on Sunday Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka the winner of the presidential election, defeating incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The commission said on its website that Dissanayaka, 55, won the presidency with 42.31% of the vote at Saturday’s election, pushing opposition leader Sajith Premadasa to second place and Wickremesinghe to a distant third.

Dissanayaka is due to be sworn in on Monday.

For the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, its presidential election went into a second round of counting after no single candidate won more than 50% of the vote.

The election commission counted voters’ second and third choices for president as people were asked to mark up to three candidates in order of preference during the election.

The first round, which saw the counting of people’s primary choice of candidate, had Anura Kumara Dissanayake in the lead with 42.31% and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa in second place with 32.76%.

The election on Saturday was the first to be held since mass protests unseated the country’s leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in 2022 after the country suffered its worst economic crisis.