Colombo: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's leftist coalition won a majority in snap parliamentary polls, provisional results showed Friday.
The National People's Power coalition won at least 123 seats in the 225-member parliament after securing around 62 per cent of the vote in ballots counted so far, according to election commission data.
The main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and the National Democratic Front (NDF), backed by former president Ranil Wickremesinghe, have been decimated to 18 and under 5 per cent respectively. The SJB has won 8 seats while the NDP has bagged a solitary seat.
The Rajapaksa family's Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPP) despite being placed fourth in terms of votes has garnered 2 seats.
Analysts say the NPP experienced a greater swing in comparison with the September presidential election. They are likely to cross the 150-seat mark or the absolute majority in the 225-member assembly.
This will be the first parliamentary election since Sri Lanka plunged into an economic crisis when the island nation declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022, its first since gaining independence from Britain in 1948.
Since assuming office, Dissanayake has stayed on course with his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme. The country is still recovering from its worst economic crisis in history as the Dissanayake government faces the challenge of meeting the IMF targets on revenue in the third review of the USD 2.9 billion programme.
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