Sri Lankans voted Saturday to elect their president, two years after a catastrophic financial crisis forced the country into a brutal and widely unpopular austerity drive.
At the head of the country since 2022, the outgoing Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, is seeking a new mandate with the sole agenda of continuing the forced recovery of the island.
“I brought this country out of bankruptcy […] Now I will make Sri Lanka a country with a developed economy, social system and political system,” he promised after casting his vote on Saturday.
He faces his former centre-right ally Sajith Premadasa, 57, and left-wing coalition leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, 55.
The outgoing president is given a little more than 18%, according to initial results based on a still very partial count, and his former ally at less than 20%.
After lengthy negotiations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finally released emergency aid of $2.9 billion in 2023, in exchange for significant tax increases and drastic cuts in public spending.
Order has since been restored on the streets and Sri Lanka’s growth has started to pick up again, although it remains fragile, the IMF warned.
But the country has sunk into poverty, which now affects more than a quarter of its 22 million people, according to the World Bank.
Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, head of the Marxist-inspired People’s Liberation Front (JVP), has promised to renegotiate the terms of the agreement with the IMF.
“Our party needs a new political culture,” he said confidently as he cast his vote on Saturday. “After the victory, I urge everyone to remain calm.”
Curfew
The presidency declared a curfew until 6:00 a.m. local time on Sunday morning “as an additional measure to protect the population.”
If no candidate exceeds the 50% mark, the electoral commission will have to conduct a new count to identify the second or third preferences of voters and decide between the contenders.
“We have never had a three-way battle like this,” political analyst Kusal Perera told AFP. “This is the first presidential election where no one can seriously predict the outcome.”
On Saturday, many Colombo voters expressed weariness, exhausted by two years of hardship and restrictions.
“We need change in this country,” Mohamed Siraj Razik, 43, told AFP, “the misuse of public funds for the benefit of the political class must stop.”
An old “fox” of local politics – he was prime minister six times – Mr Wickremesinghe acceded to the presidency in July 2022 after the fall of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, driven from his palace by an angry mob exhausted by inflation and shortages.
He inherited an economy strangled by $46 billion in debt, much of it owed to China, and in the midst of a recession.
Market economy
The JVP, led by candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, which sparked two deadly uprisings in the early 1970s and late 1980s, has renounced armed struggle and largely converted to a market economy.
The number one opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, 57, is also expected to win a significant share of the votes of the discontented.
A former close associate of Ranil Wickremesinghe, he has also pledged to extract concessions from the IMF.
The international institution, however, does not seem willing to soften its demands.
“Progress has been made, but the country is still far from being out of the rut,” warned IMF communications chief Julie Kozack last week.
“We still have many challenges ahead of us,” said one voter, Soundarie David Rodrigo, on Saturday, “so good luck to whoever comes to power.”