Sri Lanka local polls: President Dissanayake's party wins first official result

Colombo: The National People's Power (NPP) led by Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the first official result declared by the Elections Commission in the local council election held on Tuesday.

A total of 339 local councils on Tuesday went to the polls, which were postponed in 2023 following the island's economic crisis. The counting of votes commenced soon after voting ended at 4 pm. The voter turnout was 70.23 per cent.

According to the latest details, the NPP secured 46 per cent of the votes, winning 9 seats in the Tangalle Urban Council in the Deep South district of Hambantota, the stronghold of the Rajapaksa family.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the main opposition party, secured 28 per cent of votes and won 5 seats while Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) received 16 per cent of votes and won 3 seats. Two other parties gained one seat each in the 19-member council.

Tangalle was one of the councils which went to the polls to elect members for a four-year term.

The ruling NPP won the presidential and parliamentary elections held last year.

"The local government election is being seen as an opinion poll on the performance of the new government so far. The ruling National People’s Power (NPP) is confident of winning the polls,” Colombo Gazette said.

Earlier in the day, Dissanayake cast his vote at a booth at Panchikawatta in Colombo soon after returning from Vietnam. “Proud that under our NPP govt, Sri Lanka is seeing peaceful, democratic elections. Let’s make this the new political culture — free, fair, and dignified,” he said in a post on X.

Voting was held without any incidents of violence, election monitoring groups said.

“The voting has finished, and the counting has commenced. The votes cast at each division will be counted at the division centres,” the head of the independent election commission, RMAL Ratnayake, told reporters earlier.

Over 17 million voters cast their votes at over 13,000 polling centres in the election under a mixed proportional representation system.