Marxist-leaning politician Dissanayake leads as second round of counting under way to decide the presidential winner.

Sri Lanka’s presidential election has gone into the second round for the first time in its history. No candidate received the mandatory 50 percent of votes, in the first election since an unprecedented financial crisis hit the South Asian island nation two years ago.

Marxist-leaning politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake, seen as an alternative to the traditional political elite, secured 39.5 percent of the votes ahead of opposition leader Sajith Premadasa who attained 34 percent.

The incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been disqualified along with the remaining 36 candidates, the Election Commission told reporters.

A second round of counting is under way to decide the winner of the presidential race.

“That phase is when they look at preferential votes cast by voters and they add that to the total that is being held by the first two leading candidates,” according to Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, who is reporting from the capital Colombo.

“We are expecting the final result fairly soon.”

Wickremesinghe, who led the heavily indebted nation’s fragile economic recovery from a debilitating crisis in 2022, trailed in third with only 17 percent of the vote.

Though he stabilised the economy after it defaulted on its loans in 2022, his failure to address the cost-of-living crisis swayed voters away from him. His association with the Rajapaksa family, who have been blamed for the economic crisis, also probably dented his appeal.

The state of the economy was the centre stage of the election agenda as Dissanayake, 55, promised welfare measures to ease people’s lives. He has also been critical of the austerity measures imposed as part of a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure loans, and he has pledged to negotiate the terms of the deal.

Dissanayake leads the left-leaning coalition National People’s Power, an umbrella group, presenting himself as the candidate of change.

His popularity rose after the 2022 protests forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and later resign, making way for Wickremesinghe.

“The election result clearly shows the uprising that we witnessed in 2022 is not over,” said Pradeep Peiris, a political scientist at the University of Colombo.

Premadasa, the 57-year-old son of the slain President Ranasinghe Premadasa, also pledged to renegotiate the contours of the IMF deal.

About 75 percent of the 17 million eligible voters cast their ballots, according to the commission.