Anura Dissanayake takes early lead in Sri Lanka presidential postal votes
ECONOMYNEXT – Anura Kumara Dissanayake of Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power, backed by the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, has taken an early lead in postal votes of the Presidential election 2024 declared so far.
Dissanayake polled 56 percent or 92,949 votes out 164,027 valid votes.
Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and President Wickremesinghe trailed behind each polling 19 percent.
Postal votes of mainly state workers on election duty is usually an indicator of what is to come, especially when gaps are large.
Wickremesinghe went to the polls in a stabilization crisis, after macroeconomists cut rates with inflationary domestic operations, triggering a collapse of the currency from 200 to 360 to the US dollar and 70 percent annual inflation and external default.
Sri Lanka suffered a series of currency crises since the end of a 30-year civil war attempting to target a policy rate, despite having reserve collecting central banks.
Crises worsened after the International Monetary Fund gave technical assistance to the central bank to calculate potential output.
The agency printed money to narrowly target a call money rate to reach potential output, a type of Keynesian stimulus, denying the monetary stability that comes from a wide policy corridor to the nation.