Sri Lanka’s New President: A Nobody Becomes Superstar

After the economic fallout in the year 2022, Sri Lanka has recovered rather quickly as the country went to presidential polls recently. The counting for the same was completed today and the country has elected its new President in a comprehensive manner.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the new President of Sri Lanka and he is a leftist leader by nature. Dissanayake has Marxist ideology and he created a remarkable feat by becoming the new President of the country, despite having no prior political experience in power-holding posts.

Interestingly, the same Dissanayake got less than 3% votes in the 2019 Sri Lankan presidential elections as the people outright rejected him. In a span of five years, his graph grew so steeply that he won the presidential race this year by polling 42.3% votes.

Incidentally, this is also the first time Sri Lanka’s presidential election went to a second round of counting because the top two candidates did not receive the required 50 percent of the votes. In the end, Dissanayake won against incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

From not even being in the mainstream numbers game in 2019, to becoming the new president, it has been a remarkable turnaround for the new president. But he has an uphill task of resurrecting the country’s long-standing corruption and economic crisis battles.