Colombo (AFP) - Cash-strapped Sri Lanka’s main Marxist politician took a comfortable lead Sunday in a keenly fought presidential election that has turned into a referendum on an unpopular IMF bailout.

Early results from Saturday’s vote strongly suggested that 55-year-old Anura Kumara Dissanayaka would become the first leftist commander-in-chief and head of state of the small but strategically placed island nation.

The election pits Dissanayaka against President Ranil Wickremesinghe and rival candidate Namal Rajapaksa, whose campaign conceded defeat early Sunday.

About 76 percent of the 17.1 million-person electorate turned out to vote, officials said, with final results expected later Sunday.

Dissanayaka’s strong showing in the postal ballot, considered an accurate indication of the entire electorate, also boosted expectations that he would win.

Election officials said Dissanayaka had won 58 percent of postal votes, with about a third of ballots counted.

In previous polls, candidates who garnered more than 50 percent of the postal ballot have gone on to win the presidency.

Rajapaksa’s aides said Dissanayaka had won the vote.

“Anura Kumara Dissanayaka has won the election,” Rajapaksa’s campaign aide Milinda Rajapaksha said on Facebook, adding: “Namal Rajapaksa won politics.”

The 38-year-old scion of the once powerful Rajapaksa clan entered the fray as a dress rehearsal for the 2029 presidential poll, sources close to him told AFP.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, a close ally of Wickremesinghe, also said Dissanayaka had won.

“After a long and arduous campaign, the results of the election are now clear,” Sabry said on X.

“Though I heavily campaigned for President Ranil Wickremasinghe, the people of Sri Lanka have made their decision, and I fully respect their mandate for Anura Kumara Dissanayaka.”

There was no immediate reaction from Wickremesinghe, but he declared an eight-hour curfew despite the independent Election Commission describing Saturday’s vote as the most peaceful in the country’s electoral history.

Police said the curfew was “an additional measure to protect people.”

Earlier in the day, the government declared Monday would be a special public holiday.

- ‘No violence’ -

Wickremesinghe is seeking re-election to continue belt-tightening measures that have stabilised the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages after Sri Lanka’s worst economic meltdown in 2022.

His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country as anger mounted.

“I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot.

But Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other measures, imposed under the terms of a $2.9-billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet.

Dissanayaka’s once-marginal Marxist party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than four percent of the vote in the most recent parliamentary elections, held in August 2020.

But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture.

He said at a polling station he was confident of securing the top job.

“After the victory there should be no clashes, no violence,” he said. “Our country needs a new political culture.”

Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, was expected to be in second position.

Premadasa has vowed to fight endemic corruption. Both he and Dissanayaka have pledged to renegotiate the terms of the IMF rescue package.

- Three-way race -

Earlier in the day, political analyst Kusal Perera told AFP it was difficult to predict a winner from the three-way race – the first in the island’s history.

The government has banned the sale of liquor over the weekend and said no victory rallies or celebrations would be permitted until a week after the final results.

Economic issues dominated the eight-week campaign, with public anger widespread over the hardships endured since the peak of the crisis two years ago.

Official data showed that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate doubled to 25 percent between 2021 and 2022, adding more than 2.5 million people to those already living on less than $3.65 a day.

Experts warn that Sri Lanka’s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island’s $46 billion foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default.

The IMF said reforms enacted by Wickremesinghe’s government were beginning to pay off, with growth slowly returning.

But the country was also warned that it was not out of the woods yet.