Sri Lanka: Economic Issues Dominate Presidential Election
The Asian country has yet to overcome the crisis caused by the covid pandemic
In Sri Lanka, one of the least wealthy countries in Southeast Asia, 17 million eligible voters were called today (Saturday, September 21) to elect the country’s new president.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the former president elected in 2019, has not completed his mandate after he was forced to resign due to massive popular protests caused by the never-ending economic crisis.
Following Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation, Sri Lanka’s parliament appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as interim president in 2022, who wanted to organize a presidential election in order to be “elected by the people and not by parliament.” Ranil Wickremesinghe presented himself for the vote as an independent candidate.
The election commission is expected to announce the first official results after 23:00 local time (20:00 in Europe).
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s main competitors are Sajith Premadasa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and Namal Rajapaksa. The full list of candidates includes 39 people, all men.
The election campaign was dominated by economic issues. Ranil Wickremesinghe tried to emphasize the results achieved by his government in rebuilding Sri Lanka’s economy. However, opponents claim that Ranil Wickremesinghe has done “little or nothing to revitalize the economy” over the past two years, denounce agreements between Sri Lanka and international financial institutions, and would like to renegotiate the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sri Lanka has struggled to recover economically from the crisis caused by the covid pandemic, which led to a collapse in tourism and consequently an influx of foreign exchange used to import basic necessities.
The Election Commission chose Saturday to encourage participation after low turnout, which barely exceeded 52 percent in the 2019 presidential election. According to a spokesman for Sri Lanka’s National Election Commission, “election is based on a ranked system in which voters can express up to three preferences.” If no candidate manages to get more than 50% of the votes in the first round, all candidates after the first two will be eliminated from the lists. A second vote count will then be conducted to redistribute the remaining preference votes to ultimately determine the winner with an absolute majority.
As the Sri Lankan media reminds us, “traditionally, a majority of voters express only one preference rather than three, and in previous elections, there has always been a candidate who immediately won an absolute majority.” According to the latest opinion polls, none of the major candidates, including the outgoing president, gathers more than 50% of the vote. The biggest favorite is Disayanake with 48% voter support, followed by Premadasa (25%) and outgoing President Wickremesinghe with 20%.
