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 filed his nomination as an independent candidate.
Election commission chair R.M.A.L. Rathnayake told reporters that the election had been scheduled for September 21, a Saturday.
Economic issues are expected to dominate the five-week campaign announced by the commission 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 restructuring 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.
‘Pushed into poverty’
While the months-long 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.
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.
Amal Jayasinghe, with AFP
