Colombo: Sri Lanka’s first presidential election since an unprecedented economic crisis sparked widespread unrest will be held in September, the electoral commission said on Friday.
The election will be the first test of public sentiment since the peak of the recession in 2022, which has 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 indicated he plans to run.
He will face at least two rivals in the campaign against the austerity measures his government introduced to satisfy the International Monetary Fund bailout.
The five-week campaign announced by the commission will conclude with a vote on September 21 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 recession in 2022, when GDP fell 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.
Wickemesinghe also successfully negotiated the restructuring of Sri Lanka’s $46 billion foreign debt with bilateral creditors, including China, following a government default in 2022.
But his policy of balancing the government’s accounts by raising taxes and withdrawing generous subsidies for public services was deeply unpopular with the public.
While the months-long shortages of food, fuel and medicine seen at the height 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 the terms of the $2.9 billion IMF bailout that Wickremesinghe negotiated last year.
So far, the president’s main challenger is Sajith Premadasa (57), a former party ally and current leader of the opposition.
Premadasa promised to continue economic reforms and the IMF program, but pledged to cushion the public by reducing tax increases that Wickremesing had imposed to boost state revenues.
The Left Party is also fielding its leader, 55-year-old former agriculture minister Anur Kumar Dissanayake, who is fighting plans to privatize state-owned companies.
Wickemesinghe took office after the failure of the 2022 government after a huge crowd stormed predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s compound.
Rajapaksa, who was accused of leading Sri Lanka into crisis through economic mismanagement, temporarily fled abroad and tendered his resignation from Singapore.
Local elections were due to be held last year but were postponed indefinitely after the government insisted it did not have the money for a national vote.
More than 17 million Sri Lankans over the age of 18 are eligible to vote. The Election Commission has allocated $33 million (10 billion rupees) for this year’s presidential poll.
