Tuesday’s municipal elections marked the first electoral test for Sri Lanka’s communist government since it won a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections last year as it recovered from an economic crisis.
Voters were urged by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to give his ruling National People’s Party (NPP) coalition, which holds a commanding two-thirds majority in parliament, control over all 339 local council bodies.
Building on his popularity, Dissanayake won the legislative vote two months after upending the more established political parties to win the September presidential election.
Dissanayake, 56, has maintained high tariffs since taking office and has reneged on his promise to renegotiate the terms of an unpopular IMF bailout loan that his predecessor had agreed to.
“We must understand the nature of the reality before us — an economy that has collapsed to the bottom,” Dissanayake said at his May Day rally in Colombo.
He said it was essential for his party to sweep the local councils so that all layers of the administration were “free of corruption and endemic waste”.
Additionally, he asked trade unions to refrain from agitating over “small issues” and to give his government more time to fulfill its welfare pledges.
On Tuesday, around 17.1 million voters—the same number who cast ballots in the two previous national elections—will have the opportunity to choose 8,287 council members from a field of 75,589 candidates.
With no well-known candidates, the campaign has been lackluster. Results are anticipated on Wednesday at noon.
