Colombo:

Sri Lanka’s first presidential elections since an unprecedented economic crisis spurred widespread unrest will be held in September, the election commission said Friday. 

The election will be the first test of the public mood since the height of the 2022 downturn, which caused months of food, fuel and medicine shortages across the island nation. 

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, who took office after street protests forced his predecessor to flee the country, has strongly hinted he plans to run. 

He will face at least two rivals campaigning against austerity measures his government imposed to satisfy an International Monetary Fund bailout package.

The five-week campaign announced by the commission will conclude with a September 21 vote in a country still struggling with a fragile economic recovery and endemic discontent over cost of living issues. 

Economic issues are expected to dominate the campaign as the country emerges from its worst-ever recession in 2022, when the GDP shrank by a record 7.8 percent.

Inflation has since returned to normal levels from its peak of 70 percent at the height of the crisis. 

Wickremesinghe has also successfully negotiated a restructure of Sri Lanka’s $46 billion foreign debt with bilateral lenders including China, following a 2022 government default. 

But his policies to balance the government’s books by hiking taxes and withdrawing generous utility subsidies have been deeply unpopular with the public.

While the months-long food, fuel and medicine shortages seen at the peak of the economic crisis are now a distant memory, many Sri Lankans say Wickremesinghe’s austerity measures have left them struggling to make ends meet. 

Opposition parties have vowed to renegotiate terms of the $2.9 billion IMF bailout Wickremesinghe negotiated last year.

The president’s main challenger so far is Sajith Premadasa, 57, a one-time party ally and current opposition leader.

Premadasa has vowed to continue with economic reforms and the IMF programme but pledged to cushion the public by reducing the tax increases Wickremesinghe imposed to shore up state revenue. 

A leftist party is also fielding its leader, 55-year-old former agriculture minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is campaigning against plans to privatise state companies

Wickremesinghe took office following the government default in 2022, after a huge crowd stormed predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s compound. 

Rajapaksa, who was accused of steering Sri Lanka into the crisis through economic mismanagement, temporarily fled abroad and issued his resignation from Singapore.

Local elections were due to be held last year but postponed indefinitely after the government insisted it had no money to conduct a nationwide vote. 

More than 17 million Sri Lankans over the age of 18 are eligible to cast a ballot.

The election commission has allocated $33 million (10 billion rupees) for this year’s presidential poll.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe will contest the Presidential election as an independent candidate, his aide said on July 7.

Deputy Chairman of the United National Party Ruwan Wijewardene confirmed that the presidential election will definitely be held and Mr. Wickremesinghe, 75, will contest the election as an independent candidate, News 1st reported.

“Only one leader possesses the knowledge to solve Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. That is Ranil Wickremesinghe. He has proved it with his actions,” he was quoted as saying by the news portal.

On July 7, Election Commission Chairman R.M.A.L. Ratnayake said the electoral body would be legally empowered after July 17 to announce the date for the election.

Mr. Ratnayake added that the commission will announce the date for the next presidential poll before the end of this month.

The Election Commission in May said the presidential election would be conducted between September 17 and October 16.

Mr. Ratnayake said the commission is currently in the process of putting final touches to the 2024 electoral register which will be the basis for the election. Over 17 million would be eligible to vote in the election as per the revised list, officials said.

In April 2022, the island nation declared its first-ever sovereign default since gaining Independence from Britain in 1948. The unprecedented financial crisis led President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to quit office in 2022 amid civil unrest over his inability to handle the crisis.

In July 2022, Mr. Wickremesinghe was elected through parliament to become stop-gap President for the balance term of Mr. Rajapaksa.

Mr. Wickremesinghe, also the Finance Minister, hasn’t made any public statement on his bid for re-election.

“This election isn’t merely about selecting individuals but about choosing the most effective system for our country’s progress. If you believe in the merits of the current approach, let us proceed accordingly,” the President’s Media Division quoted him as saying earlier.

The government under Mr. Wickremesinghe has set in place hard economic reforms as dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.

President Wickremesinghe last month said that his government has finalised a long-delayed debt restructuring agreement for $5.8 billion with its bilateral lenders, including India and China, in Paris to meet a key condition of an IMF bailout.