Cash-strapped Sri Lanka was yesterday voting for its next president in an effective referendum on an unpopular IMF austerity plan enacted after the island nation’s unprecedented financial crisis.
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting an uphill battle for a fresh mandate to continue belt-tightening measures that stabilized the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.
His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn in 2022 led to thousands of people storming the compound of his predecessor, who promptly fled the country.
Photo: Reuters
“I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot in the morning. “I will now deliver Sri Lanka a developed economy, developed social system and developed political system.”
However, Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other measures, imposed per the terms of a US$2.9 billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet.
“The country has been through a lot,” lawyer and musician Soundarie David Rodrigo said after casting her vote in Colombo. “So I just don’t want to see another upheaval coming soon.”
Wickremesinghe is tipped to lose to one of two formidable challengers. One is Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, the leader of a once-marginal Marxist party tarnished by its violent past. The party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than 4 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.
However, Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for the 55-year-old Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the nation’s “corrupt” political culture.
At a polling station he said he was confident of securing the top job.
“After the victory there should be no clashes, no violence,” he said. “Our country needs a new political culture.”
Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, is also expected to make a strong showing.
He vowed to fight endemic corruption, and both he and Dissanayaka have pledged to renegotiate the terms of the IMF rescue package.
“There is a significant number of voters trying to send a strong message ... that they are very disappointed with the way this country has been governed,” said Murtaza Jafferjee, chairman of the think tank Advocata Institute.
A total of 39 people are contesting the vote, including one 79-year-old candidate who remains on the ballot despite dying of a heart attack last month.
More than 17 million people are eligible to vote in the election, with more than 63,000 police deployed to guard polling booths and counting centers in schools, temples.
“We also have anti-riot squads on standby in case of any trouble, but so far everything is peaceful,” police spokesman Nihal Talduwa said. “In some areas, we have had to deploy police to ensure polling booths are safe from wild animals, especially wild elephants.”
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