In the first major political test for President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's NPP, Sri Lanka on Thursday headed to elect a new parliament. Back in September, the ruling party failed to secure 50 percent of the vote in the presidential elections.
In the first snap parliamentary elections in the island nation since the 2022 economic meltdown, Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power (NPP), the political party of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Friday secured a majority in parliament, according to official results announced by the elections commission.
Citing data released by Sri Lanka's elections commission website, PTI said NPP secured 113 seats in the 225-member assembly. In terms of the number of votes, NPP has received 6.8 million or 61 per cent of the votes counted so far.
NPP's main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and the National Democratic Front (NDF), backed by former president Ranil Wickremesinghe, have been decimated to 18 and the Rajapaksa family's Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPP) has bagged 2 seats.
According to Sri Lanka's proportional representation system, as many as 196 members are to be elected from the 22 districts while 29 would be elected from the cumulative votes polled national list to provide a 225-member Parliament.
In the first major political test for the NPP, Sri Lanka on Thursday headed to elect a new parliament. Back in September, the ruling party failed to secure 50 percent of the vote in the presidential elections.
President Dissanayake this time is pleading for a stronger parliament with well over a simple majority of 113 seats that will enable him to implement his anti-corruption accountability reformist programme.
“A strong parliament is sufficient for us. Because the bills that we bring are laws that are favorable for the common people. If we are introducing laws that benefit people, we can secure a vote that exceeds two-thirds”, the President added.
Poll analysts said NPP this time experienced a greater swing in comparison with the September presidential election and therefore are likely to cross the 150 seats mark or the absolute majority in the 225-member assembly while several monitoring groups said the voter turnout out was lower than the high 79 per cent recorded at the presidential election held in September.
This time, over 17 million voters out of a population of 21 million were eligible to vote. The apex poll body of the nation said it anticipated an overall turnout of 65 percent in the polling.
For Sri Lanka, the 2024 parliamentary election was the first one since the nation almost collapsed owing to an extreme economic meltdown. The island country was declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022 for the first time since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. Under Dissanayake's rule, the country is still in the process of recovering from its worst economic crisis in history.