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.
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.