Over a yr since protests rocked the South Asia nation of Sri Lanka, the country has voted in a brand new chief so that you could recuperate from its worst financial disaster and ensuing political upheaval.
Leftist chief Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been sworn in as Sri Lanka’s tenth president.
His luck was once received right through an election that noticed electorate reject an outdated guard accused of main the rustic into financial disaster and following days-long riots, which unfold into the presidential space and place of business within the nation’s capital, Colombo.
Dissanayake, 55, ran as head of the Marxist-leaning Nationwide Other folks’s Energy (NPP) coalition and defeated opposition chief Sajith Premadasa and 36 different applicants.
Dissanayake gained 5,740,179 votes, adopted by means of Premadasa with 4,530,902.
Indian High Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Dissanayake on his win, declaring on social media platform X that he appears ahead to pursuing and strengthening cross-country insurance policies, such because the Neighbourhood First Coverage.
The weekend election was once an important as the rustic seeks to recuperate from its worst financial disaster and ensuing political upheaval.
He is the tenth individual to carry Sri Lanka’s robust govt presidency — created in 1978 when a brand new charter expanded the place of business’s powers.
Who’s the brand new president?
Dissanayake’s coalition is led by means of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or Other folks’s Liberation Entrance, a Marxist celebration that waged two unsuccessful armed insurrections within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties to seize energy via socialist revolution.
After its defeat, the JVP entered democratic politics in 1994 and has been most commonly in opposition since then. Then again, they have got supported a number of earlier presidents and been a part of governments in brief.
The NPP grouping additionally comprises lecturers, civil society actions, artists, attorneys and scholars.
Dissanayake was once first elected to parliament in 2000 and in brief held the portfolio of agriculture and irrigation minister beneath then-President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
He ran for president for the primary time in 2019 and misplaced to Rajapaksa, who was once ousted over the commercial disaster two years later.
That financial disaster resulted from over the top borrowing to fund tasks that didn’t generate earnings, the affect of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the federal government’s insistence on the use of scarce international reserves to prop up its forex, the rupee.