- 22 Sep 2024 - 14:20(14:20 GMT)
That’s a wrap from us
Thank you for joining our live coverage of Sri Lanka’s presidential vote.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the 55-year-old leader of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party, has been declared the winner of the election.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 14:14(14:14 GMT)
Quick recap
We will be closing this live page shortly, so here’s a reminder of today’s events:
- Leftist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been declared president-elect after Saturday’s presidential election.
- The election commission made the announcement after a second vote count, the first in the Sri Lanka’s history.
- Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa finished second.
- Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe came third and was eliminated after the first round.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 14:05(14:05 GMT)
President-elect bringing vitality to role
Dissanayake was very decisive and confident in the pledges he made carrying the hopes of the nation – most of his supporters would say – during the intensive campaign period.
There was a certain amount of energy as he walked through a room. I remember covering the launch of his manifesto, and it was almost palpable that he is a dynamo.
He brings a certain kind of vitality and charisma to this role, and many people in Sri Lanka have chosen to take this gamble with him as they lost all confidence in the old guard.
Dissanayake has been in parliament for 20 years and he has seen the way the political game is played, but what he is claiming is that he brings to it a new lease of life that under his leadership will bring a new wind of change.
Advertisement - 22 Sep 2024 - 13:57(13:57 GMT)
Dissanayaka inauguration
The president-elect is expected to be sworn in on Monday, according to initial information.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 13:50(13:50 GMT)
Dissanayake declared winner
Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been declared the winner of the presidential election, according to the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.
We’ll bring you more shortly.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 13:38(13:38 GMT)
‘Radically rooting out the culture of corruption’
Nishan de Mel, executive director of the Verite Research think tank in Sri Lanka, says that a Dissanayake presidency would fill two voids in the country’s politics.
“Firstly, the political void created by the complete loss of faith in the Rajapaksa family, which has held the presidency or prime minister position for about 15 years,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Secondly, the political void created in centre-left politics, when the Rajapaksas took the previous centre-left political block toward right-wing policies,” de Mel said.
Asked what it was about Dissanayake’s messaging that resonated with voters, de Mel highlighted his promises of “radically rooting out the culture of corruption” in the country.
“The people of Sri Lanka feel that whatever political leaders they have turned to in the last few decades have been sowing the culture of corruption, and that the traditional political leaders can no longer be trusted to extricate Sri Lanka from that malaise,” the analyst said.
“So the idea that this was a candidate outside that history, was a candidate who held out the hope of change and seemed committed to rooting out the culture of corruption, was very appealing to the voter.”
- 22 Sep 2024 - 13:15(13:15 GMT)
How did the other candidates do?
As we previously said, a record 38 contenders vied for Sri Lanka’s presidency in Saturday’s vote.
Behind the leading duo of Dissanayake and Premadasa, and the third-placed Wickremesinghe, was Namal Rajapaksa, the son of Sri Lanka’s former leader Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The 38-year-old came fourth, garnering about 2.5 percent of the vote.
In fifth place was Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, who was put forward as the “Tamil common candidate” and got 1.7 percent of the vote.
No other contender managed to secure more than one percent of the national vote.
Namal Rajapaksa [File: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters] - 22 Sep 2024 - 13:00(13:00 GMT)
Third time unlucky for Wickremesinghe
Saturday’s election marked the third time that Ranil Wickremesinghe – unsuccessfully – ran for president.
His previous two bids for the top job were in 1999 and 2005.
Wickremesinghe has held a number of government jobs over the years, including the position of prime minister six times.
Watch our video profile of him, put together after lawmakers voted him in as president in 2022, to find out more:
- 22 Sep 2024 - 12:46(12:46 GMT)
Congratulations for Dissanayake
Rauff Hakeem, a parliamentarian with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, has congratulated Dissanayake for his apparent election victory, calling it a “feat”.
“The people of Sri Lanka have expressed their sincere determination in the 9th Presidential election of the country,” he wrote on X.
“We uphold this victory in the true spirit of democracy.”
The people of Sri Lanka have expressed their sincere determination in the 9th Presidential election of the country. Congratulations to the new President-elect Hon. @anuradisanayake and his team for their feat. We uphold this victory in the true spirit of democracy.
— Rauff Hakeem (@Rauff_Hakeem) September 22, 2024
Advertisement - 22 Sep 2024 - 12:15(12:15 GMT)
What caused Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis?
- Analysts say the crisis resulted largely from excessive borrowing on projects that did not generate revenue.
- Economic mismanagement by successive governments also weakened Sri Lanka’s public finances.
- The situation was exacerbated by deep tax cuts enacted by the Rajapaksa government soon after it took office in 2019.
- Months later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, wiping out much of Sri Lanka’s revenue base, mainly from tourism.
- Remittances from nationals working abroad dropped, forcing the government to draw from foreign exchange reserves.
- Fuel shortages led to long queues at filling stations as well as frequent blackouts, while hospitals ran short of medicine.
- The economic collapse led to persistent antigovernment protests, with demonstrators taking over key buildings and forcing then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
- Wickremesinghe was elected by a parliamentary vote in July 2022 to cover the remainder of Rajapaksa’s five-year term.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 11:50(11:50 GMT)
Photos: The waiting – is the hardest part
Police members sit at a counting centre in Colombo [Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters] 
People at a counting centre in Jaffna watch news updates on the television [Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters] - 22 Sep 2024 - 11:40(11:40 GMT)
NPP supporters ‘delighted’
Election Commission sources have told Al Jazeera that the final result could be known within the next 90 minutes or so.
“There is a lot of delight from the NPP and their supporters, the people who rallied behind them heeding their call for change and support to bring a new era to Sri Lanka,” Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from Colombo, said.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 11:30(11:30 GMT)
First 12 months crucial for new president
We have some more comments from Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The political analyst says he expects Dissanayake’s first “real test” to come within six months to a year from assuming office – if he is declared the winner of the presidential election.
“If he doesn’t put a big fish behind bars for corruption, I think then he’ll face certain problems,” he told Al Jazeera, citing Dissanayake’s anti-corruption crusade during the campaign.
“At the end of the day, his welfare, his subsides and all the things he’s talked about in the campaign – the question is, where is the money going to come from?”
- 22 Sep 2024 - 11:20(11:20 GMT)
Dissanayake’s party tells supporters to be patient
Vijitha Herath, a lawmaker from Dissanayake’s NPP, says party officials were confident of victory but called on supporters to be patient as the count dragged on.
“The Election Commission must complete the process of counting preference votes and that is what is delaying the final result,” he said in a video message posted on NPP’s social media accounts.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 11:10(11:10 GMT)
Official first count results
The first count showed Anura Kumara Dissanayake leading the race with about 42 percent.
In second place was Sajith Premadasa, at almost 33 percent.
Ranil Wickremesinghe was a distant third with about 17 percent.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 11:00(11:00 GMT)
Dissanayake seen as ‘one of us’
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, tells Al Jazeera that the general feeling in the country is that there is going to be “a change of regime”.
“But also, more importantly, a change of political culture and the way things are done,” he said, citing Dissanayake’s campaign pledges.
“Certainly the major plank of his campaign was anticorruption – and he’s talking about coming down very hard on all of that,” Saravanamuttu added.
“The most important thing, I think, is that he is very much a man of the people; he is not from a dynasty, he is not from Colombo, and therefore he is seen as ‘one of us’.”
Anura Kumara Dissanayake [File: Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo] - 22 Sep 2024 - 10:45(10:45 GMT)
‘Unlikely preferential votes to make a big difference’
The first round finished with the final numbers being 5.6 million votes for Dissanayake and 4.3 million votes for Premadasa.
Even though there is a gap of 1.3 million votes between the two, the Sri Lankan Constitution requires a winner at a presidential election to poll 50 percent plus one vote. Since that hasn’t happened, they have to go into round two, which is why the preferential vote count has kicked in.
That is happening, and we have heard that most of this counting has finished.
And what we are hearing from inside sources, from the commission and those involved in the process, is that it will be difficult for the preferential votes that are being totalled up to make a real, massive change.
So it is almost a given that Dissanayake is the victor. But given the procedures and the way the system works, they will wait for the additional votes from the preferential ballots to be added and then declare the winner.
Advertisement - 22 Sep 2024 - 10:30(10:30 GMT)
‘Not a quick fix’
In March 2023, crisis-hit Sri Lanka agreed to a 48-month emergency loan. As with all IMF deals, it came with strict conditions.
In exchange for funds, Wickremesinghe was forced to remove electricity subsidies and double the rate of value-added tax.
“Wide-ranging austerity also included a sovereign debt restructuring,” Katrina Ell, director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics, told Al Jazeera.
Refinancing operations typically involve exchanging old debt instruments for new, more affordable ones. Sri Lanka’s foreign and domestic lenders had to accept equivalent losses of 30 percent as part of the IMF agreement.
“All these measures do not offer a quick fix,” Ell said.
Still, “Sri Lanka’s economy has shown meaningful signs of improvement” since 2022, she said.
The rupee has stabilised and inflation has come down sharply from its 2022 peak. The World Bank forecasts the economy to expand 2.2 percent in 2024, following two straight years of negative growth.
On the other hand, real wages remain significantly below pre-crisis levels and the country’s poverty rate has doubled, according to the World Bank.
Read more here.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 10:15(10:15 GMT)
Voters aspired to have ‘different political practices, institutions’
Pradeep Peiris, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, says the result “clearly shows the uprising that we witnessed in 2022 is not over”, referring to the mass protests which forced then leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and resign.
Speaking to Reuters, he said voters cast ballots “in line with those aspirations to have different political practices and political institutions”.
He added that Dissanayake “reflects these aspirations and people have rallied around him”.
- 22 Sep 2024 - 10:00(10:00 GMT)
‘Demand for change, anticorruption action’
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, a political analyst and executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, has told Al Jazeera that Dissanayake’s strong showing “reflects the demand for change” in the 2022 so-called Aragalaya protest movement, especially among young voters.
He also said it echoes the calls “for strong action in respect of corruption” and hopes for “a political culture of transparency and accountability”.
Commenting on Dissanayake’s economic agenda, Saravanamuttu said the candidate “promised a reduction of taxes, looking after the bloated public service, focusing on tourism and local economic ventures”.
“What he hasn’t been able to do is to indicate in a clear and coherent plan as to where the money for all this is to come from. There is also concern about the expertise and experience of his economic team who have not really been tested before and some of whom come from the original JVP Marxist background,” he noted.
Sri Lanka 2024 election results updates: Dissanayake declared winner
These were the updates on Sri Lanka’s presidential election.
Sri Lanka votes: Record number of candidates in presidential election
Published On 22 Sep 2024
This live page is now closed.
- Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake wins Sri Lanka’s presidential election, according to official results.
- For the first time in the country’s history, election officials counted the second-preference votes after no candidate secured 50 percent.
- Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa finished second, while incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe came a distant third.
- The state of the economy dominated voters’ concerns, with many struggling to make ends meet after the imposition of harsh austerity measures following a $2.9bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) emergency loan.
