It was the first election in Sri Lanka since the country went bankrupt two years ago. Voters chose a left-wing opposition candidate.
Colombo – The left-wing candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won the presidential election in Sri Lanka. According to the state election commission of the island state, the 55-year-old MP and leader of the “National People’s Power” (NPP) coalition won with a lead of more than a million votes over the opposition leader in parliament, Sajith Premadasa. Dissanayake declared himself the winner on Platform X: “This victory belongs to all of us.”
A second round of counting was necessary to determine the result, as none of the almost 40 candidates had achieved the required majority after the first round. Only the leading candidates Dissanayake and Premadasa remained, the others were eliminated after the first round. Among them was the incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over the presidency of the South Asian island state in the Indian Ocean after the state went bankrupt two years ago. dpa
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