Dissanayake's NPP party wins election

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's party secured a majority in parliament in the snap general election on Thursday, according to the country's Election Commission on Friday.

After the votes were counted, statistics from the commission showed that Dissanayake's National People's Power, or NPP, party won 141 seats and secured 6,863,186 votes.

Former opposition leader Sajith Premadasa's Samagi Jana Balawegaya alliance was next, winning 35 seats and 1,968,716 votes.

Victory will enable Dissanayake to deliver on his promises to fight corruption, gain stability in the South Asian island country, and further lift it from its worst-ever economic crisis.

On the social media platform X, Dissanayake expressed his gratitude by posting a message in Sinhala, Tamil and English: "Thank you to all who voted for a renaissance!"

According to Sri Lankan parliamentary regulations, the ruling party needs a parliamentary majority to pass laws and a two-thirds majority to bring constitutional amendments.

Dissanayake's NPP won nearly 62 percent of the vote in Thursday's election. This showed a clear hike from the 42 percent he gained in the country's presidential election in September.

Dissanayake won the presidential election on Sept 21 by obtaining approximately 5.7 million votes and was later sworn in as the ninth executive president of Sri Lanka.

He then dissolved parliament on Sept 25 to make way for a general election, which he called for on Thursday. The newly elected parliament is scheduled to convene on Nov 21.

Critical point

"We see this as a critical turning point for Sri Lanka. We expect a mandate to form a strong parliament, and we are confident the people will give us this mandate," Dissanayake told the media after casting his vote in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo on Thursday.

Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political economist and senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka told China Daily, "It's a historic change. For the first time in our history, the government has got such a large majority under the proportional representation system … and it's significant because even in the minority-dominated Northern Province in the electoral districts, they were the clear winner in the elections."

According to him, the NPP has a huge mandate, but there are high expectations among the people, and in particular, they have to address the economic issues, because Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis since independence.

"There's also expectations that they should change the constitution, as well as address the economic issues," he noted, adding that it is to be seen whether they have the political will to be able to achieve all that.

"But a big constraint is the IMF program and the austerity measures coming under the IMF program, so they have to figure out a way to deal with the IMF and provide relief to the people," he added.

Of the Sri Lankan parliament's 225 seats, 196 are elected from 22 multimember electoral districts. The remaining 29 seats are elected from National Lists allocated to the parties (and independent groups) in proportion to their share of the national vote.

The commission has yet to declare how the 29 National List seats are divided, but many expect the NPP to secure the key two-thirds majority.

Xinhua contributed to this story.