Politics Opposition leader wins presidential election in Sri Lanka

The left-wing candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won the presidential election in Sri Lanka. According to the island nation's state election commission, the 55-year-old MP and leader of the National People's Power (NPP) coalition won with a lead of more than one 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 for the result after none of the almost 40 candidates 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.

SDA