Policy Asia
Sri Lanka turns to untried leftists to lead break from poverty, strife
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the charismatic orator who became Sri Lanka’s president in September, led his left-leaning party to a historic victory in this month’s parliamentary elections, unseating a coalition bloc that had dominated since the 1990s.
But the scale of the win is matched by the magnitude of expectations for a government with no previous experience running the country, with voters demanding a crackdown on corruption, improvements in a battered economy and the restoration of ethnic peace.