Sri Lanka’s new president Anura Kumara Dissanayake

Left-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been elected as Sri Lanka’s next president after he won the debt-ridden country’s first election since its economy collapsed in 2022.
The 55-year-old beat off his nearest rival, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, to emerge as the clear winner after a historic second round of counting, which included second-preference votes. Outgoing president Ranil Wikremesinghe trailed in third.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who won just 3% of the votes in the 2019 election. Dissanayake, who contested as candidate for the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, has drawn increasing support in recent years for his anti-corruption platform and pro-poor policies – particularly in the wake of the country’s worst ever economic crisis, which is still having an impact on millions.
He will now inherit governance of a nation that is struggling to emerge from the shadow of that crisis, and a populace that is desperate for change.
Dissanayake was born on 24 November, 1968 in Galewela, a multi-cultural and multi-religious town in central Sri Lanka.
Raised as a member of the middle-class, he is public school educated, has a degree in physics, and first entered politics as a student around the time when the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement was signed in 1987: an event that would lead to one of Sri Lanka’s bloodiest periods.
From 1987 to 1989, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) – a Marxist political party with which Dissanayake would later become closely associated – spearheaded an armed revolt against the Sri Lankan government.
The insurrectionist campaign, spurred by discontent among the youth of the rural lower and middle classes, precipitated a conflict marked by raids, assassinations and attacks against both political opponents and civilians which claimed thousands of lives.
Dissanayake, who was elected to the JVP’s central committee in 1997 and became its leader in 2008, has since apologised for the group’s violence during this so-called “season of terror”.
“A lot of things happened during the armed conflict that should not have happened,” he said in a 2014 interview with the BBC.
“We are still shocked, and shocked that things happened at our hands that should not have happened. We are always deeply saddened and shocked about that.”
The JVP, which currently has just three seats in parliament, is part of the NPP coalition that Dissanayake now heads.