Sri Lanka Counts Parliament Votes as Leader Seeks to Boost Power
Outside a polling station ahead of the voting in Sri Lanka's parliamentary election in Colombo on Nov. 14.
Photographer: Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images
Sri Lanka began counting votes in a parliamentary election that will decide whether the nation’s outsider leftist president will be able to fulfill his ambitious pledges to combat corruption and rewrite an unpopular International Monetary Fund loan program.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake called for the early polls on the heels of his victory in the Sept. 21 presidential election, widely seen as a stunning rebuke of Sri Lanka’s political elite, who voters blamed for leading the country into a historic debt default in 2022. A $3 billion IMF bailout that followed the next year came with tough austerity measures that Dissanayake’s party said increased the economic burden on the poor.