Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's leftist coalition won a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, results showed Friday, as voters repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis. Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat graft and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.

The coalition had a monumental 62 per cent of the vote among the more than three-quarters of ballots counted so far, while opposition leader Sajith Premadasa's party was well behind with only 18 per cent.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna [JVP or People’s Liberation Front], which leads Sri Lanka’s ruling National People’s Power [NPP], could not have risen to power without widening its appeal and building a mass support base over the last few years, and the current political moment affords the party a chance to rewrite its history, general secretary Tilvin Silva said.