The Marxist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayaka is getting the most votes in Sri Lanka’s presidential election. However, it is still unclear whether the elections will go to a second round.
When slightly less than half of the votes had been counted, Dissanayaka had received 47 percent of them. To be elected in the first round, a candidate must receive at least half of the votes.
The second is the candidate of the largest opposition coalition Sajith Premadasa with a share of about 28 percent. The current president Ranil Wickremesinghe is third with about 15 percent.
Wickremesinghe became president in 2022 when the president Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and fled abroad. The resignation was led by widespread protests, the cause of which was the economic crisis that brought Sri Lanka to the brink of bankruptcy.
About 76 percent of Sri Lanka’s 17.1 million eligible voters went to vote.
The left-wing JJP party of Dissanayaka, who was declared the winner, received only four percent of the votes in the previous parliamentary elections in 2020.
Sources: AP, AFP, Reuters