New Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's party was set for a landslide victory in snap legislative elections, initial results showed Friday. With more than half the ballots in Thursday's parliamentary elections counted,

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s coalition took an early lead in parliamentary elections seen as a test of the leftist leader’s ambitious pledges to combat corruption and change the terms of an unpopular International Monetary Fund bailout.

Sri Lanka began counting votes cast on Thursday in a snap general election that will decide if the Indian Ocean island nation will give its new leftist president greater legislative power to help the poor as it recovers from a financial meltdown.