MARXIST candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake has won Sri Lanka’s presidential election, according to data published today by the Election Commission.

He defeated centrist opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and right-wing president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took power two years ago after the country’s economy hit bottom.

Mr Dissanayake, who campaigned for working-class interests and against the political elite, which was widely blamed for pushing Sri Lanka into the worst economic crisis in its history, received 5,740,179 votes in Saturday’s election, followed by Mr Premadasa with 4,530,902, the official data showed.

“This achievement is not the result of any single person’s work but the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of you,” Mr Dissanayake wrote on Twitter.

“Your commitment has brought us this far, and for that, I am deeply grateful. This victory belongs to all of us.”

He leads the left-wing National People’s Power coalition, which brings together civil society groups, professionals, Buddhist clergy and students.

The election was a virtual referendum on Mr Wickremesinghe’s leadership of a fragile recovery, including a restructuring of Sri Lanka’s debt under an International Monetary Fund bailout programme after it defaulted in 2022.

Mr Dissanayake had vowed to renegotiate the IMF deal to make austerity measures more bearable, while Mr Wickremesinghe claimed that any attempt to alter the basics of the agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly $3 billion (£2.25bn) that is crucial to maintaining stability.

No candidate received more than 50 per cent of the vote, so, under Sri Lanka’s single transferable vote electoral system, the second and third preference of voters who backed eliminated candidates were used to decide the winner.

The government announced on Thursday that it had passed the final hurdle in debt restructuring by reaching an agreement in principle with private bond holders.

At the time of its default, Sri Lanka’s local and foreign debt totalled $83bn (£62.3bn). The government says it has now restructured more than $17bn.

Despite a significant improvement in key economic figures, Sri Lankans are struggling with high taxes and living costs.

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis resulted largely from excessive borrowing on projects that did not generate revenue, but matters were made worse by Covid-19 pandemic and the government’s insistence on using scarce foreign reserves to prop up the rupee.