COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist leader, was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s president on Monday. This followed an election where voters rejected the old guard, who they blamed for the country’s economic crisis.
Dissanayake, 55, the head of the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition, won the election on Saturday. He defeated Sajith Premadasa, the opposition leader, and 36 other candidates.
Dissanayake received 5,740,179 votes, while Premadasa received 4,530,902.
In a short speech, the new president committed to working with others to address the country’s challenges.
“We understand that we are taking over a country in a challenging situation,” Dissanayake said. “We don’t believe that a government, a single party or an individual can solve this deep crisis.”
Just before the swearing-in ceremony, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena resigned, allowing the new president to appoint a prime minister and a cabinet.
The election took place as the country strives to recover from its worst economic and political crisis.
He is the ninth person to hold Sri Lanka’s powerful executive presidency, established in 1978 when a new constitution expanded the office’s powers.
Dissanayake’s coalition is led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, or People’s Liberation Front. This is a Marxist party that led two unsuccessful armed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s to seize power through socialist revolution. Following their defeat, the JVP entered democratic politics in 1994 and has mainly been in opposition since then. However, they have supported several past presidents and briefly participated in government.
The NPP also includes groups representing academics, civil society movements, artists, lawyers and students.
Dissanayake was first elected to Parliament in 2000 and briefly served as agriculture and irrigation minister under then-President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 and lost to Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Dissanayake’s first significant challenge will be to fulfill his campaign promise to ease the strict austerity measures imposed by his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe under a relief agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Wickremesinghe has warned that any changes to the fundamental terms of the agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly $3 billion.
This economic crisis was caused by excessive borrowing to fund projects that didn’t generate revenue, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s insistence on using limited foreign reserves to support its currency, the rupee.
It led to shortages of essential goods such as food, medicine, cooking gas and fuel in 2022. This sparked large-scale protests, which forced then-president Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
Wickremesinghe, who was then prime minister, was appointed to complete the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term.