Sri Lanka’s President Dissanayake’s leads his NPP coalition to victory with 159 parliament seats in snap polls

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist coalition registered a landslide victory in Sri Lanka’s snap parliamentary elections, according to official results announced by the country’s election commission.

The Left-leaning coalition won 159 seats in the 225-member parliament, according to the Sri Lanka election commission website as per the final results of the polls that were held on November 14.

Dissanayake, needed a clear majority to fulfil his promises and his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition secured a two-thirds majority in the 225-member parliament, winning 159 seats, whereas, opposition leader Premadasa’s party won 35 seats.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s ( the son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa) party the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party won 40 seats and the New Democratic Front (NDF), backed by previous President Ranil Wickremesinghe, won just five seats.

The SLPP won 3 seats, while the ITAK was victorious in 8 seats, the SB registered a win in only one seat. The SLMC won three seats whule the UNP and the DTNA won one seat each.

According to a report by Al Jazeera, Dissanayake has pledged to abolish the country’s executive presidency, a system under which power is largely centralised under the president.

The executive presidency, which first came into existence under President JR Jayawardene in 1978, has been widely criticised in the country for years, but no political party, once in power, has scrapped it until now. The system has in recent years been blamed by critics for the country’s economic and political crises.

SBJ, led by Sajith Premadasa, the son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, had 35 seats. Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, which represents the Tamil ethnic minority, had seven seats, while New Democratic Front and Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna had three seats and two seats, respectively, Al Jazeera reported.

The party, previously held only three seats in the parliament, which led to his decision to dissolve the assembly and call for fresh elections.

Dissanayake won the presidential elections held in September this year. With his coalition holding just three seats in the outgoing parliament, the 55-year-old leader of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) called snap legislative elections in search of a new mandate.

The parliamentary poll mandate enables Dissnayake to ease punishing austerity measures in the crisis-stricken Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has been struggling to recover from its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948 following economic mismanagement by successive governments, the COVID-19 pandemic and 2019 Easter bombings.

In 2022, then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign after tens of thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets to protest sky-high inflation and fuel and food shortages.

Rajapaksa’s replacement Wickremesinghe, who finished third in September’s presidential election, oversaw a stabilising of the economy, but his government’s efforts to raise revenue, including by raising electricity bills and income taxes, proved unpopular with the public, Al Jazeera noted.

In the Sri Lankan unicameral parliament all members are elected for a five-year term. But 29 out of 225 seats are decided indirectly through a national list.