Left-wing candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s presidential election. The island nation’s National Election Commission said the 55-year-old lawmaker and leader of the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition won by more than a million votes over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa in parliament. Dissanayake declared himself the winner on Platform X: “This victory belongs to all of us.”
The results necessitated a second round of counting because none of the nearly 40 candidates had secured the required majority after the first round. Only front-runners Dissanayake and Premadasa remain, with the rest eliminated after the first round. Among them is incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over as president of the South Asian Indian Ocean island nation after national bankruptcy two years ago.
