Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s
presidential election after a historic second round of counting.
No candidate won more than 50% of the total votes in the first
round, where Dissanayake got 42.31% while his closest rival,
opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, got 32.76%.
But Dissanayake, who promised voters good governance and tough
anti-corruption measures, emerged as winner after the second
count, which tallied voters' second and third choice candidates.
The election on Saturday was the first to be held since mass
protests unseated the country's leader, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in
2022 after Sri Lanka suffered its worst economic crisis.
The 55 year old Dissanayake, told Sri Lankans that the victory
belongs to all of them.
Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe was eliminated from the
second count, having won 17% of the vote in the first round, putting
him in third place in the polling.
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