- Dissanayake did not appoint a new finance minister.
- The leftist coalition gets 159 seats in Parliament.
- Focus on poverty reduction and anti-corruption measures.
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake reappointed Harini Amarasuriya as Prime Minister of the Indian Ocean island nation on Monday.
Dissanayake, whose leftist coalition won 159 seats in the 225-member parliament in the general election, reappointed veteran lawmaker Vijitha Herath to head the Foreign Ministry.
Dissanayake did not appoint a new finance minister during his swearing-in on Monday, indicating that he will retain the key finance portfolio as he did in September after winning the presidential election.
Dissanayake, an outsider on the political scene in a country dominated by family parties for decades, easily won the presidential elections held on the island last September and appointed Amarasuriya as prime minister while choosing Herath to head foreign affairs.
But his Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition only had three seats in parliament, prompting him to dissolve it and seek a new mandate in Thursday’s snap elections.
The president leaned toward policy continuity, with a sweeping mandate in the general election giving Dissanayake the legislative authority to press ahead with his plans to combat poverty and graft in the island nation, which is recovering from a financial collapse.
Sri Lanka, with a population of 22 million, was crushed by an economic crisis in 2022 caused by a severe foreign currency shortage that pushed it into a sovereign debt default and caused its economy to contract by 7.3% in 2022 and 2.3% last year.
While a strong mandate will boost political stability in the South Asian nation, some uncertainty over the policy direction remains due to Dissanayake’s promises to try to adjust the terms of the International Monetary Fund’s bailout program that rescued the country from its economic crisis, analysts say. He said.