Sri Lankans began voting on Thursday in a snap election to decide if the Indian Ocean island will give its new leftist president greater strength to help the poor as it recovers from a financial meltdown.

Sri Lankans have voted in a parliamentary election that's key for their new, Marxist-leaning president to consolidate his party’s power and follow through on promises of economic recovery

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.