Cash-strapped Sri Lanka will vote for its next president on Saturday in an effective referendum on an unpopular International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity plan enacted after the island nation\u2019s unprecedented financial crisis. President Ranil Wickremesinghe urged voters to give him a fresh mandate to continue with austerity measures he says stabilised the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages. \u201cWe must continue with reforms to end bankruptcy,\u201d Wickremesinghe, 75, said at his final rally in Colombo on Wednesday night. \u201cWe must build a new economy.\u201d He has restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn in 2022 saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor, who promptly fled the country. \u201cDecide if you want to go back to the period of terror, or progress\u201d, he added. But Wickremesinghe\u2019s tax hikes and other belt-tightening measures, imposed in line with a $2.9-billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling. Experts warn that Sri Lanka\u2019s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island\u2019s $46bn foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default. \u201cThe election will largely be a referendum on how Wickremesinghe\u2019s government has handled the economic crisis and the ensuing modest recovery,\u201d the International Crisis Group said this week. It added that many citizens were suffering \u201cenormous hardship at the same time as Colombo cuts costs and takes other austerity measures perceived by the public as unfair\u201d. As election rallies ended on Wednesday night after a 56-day campaign period, the country entered a \u201ccooling off period\u201d of two days ahead of Saturday\u2019s vote. Some 17.1 million people are eligible to vote. Over 200,000 officials have been deployed to conduct the election which will be guarded by 63,000 police. Results are expected by Sunday. Police spokesman Nihal Talduwa told reporters in Colombo that the campaign had been relatively peaceful with 464 polls-related complaints, but no serious crimes. Rising red star Wickremesinghe faces two formidable challengers including 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 won less than four per cent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections. But Sri Lanka\u2019s 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 island\u2019s \u201ccorrupt\u201d political culture. \u201c[September] 21st (voting day) will be the beginning of a long journey to completely change the system of governance in Sri Lanka,\u201d Dissanayaka told his rally decorated with red flags at a suburb of Colombo. Analysts say he is likely to benefit from public anger over graft scandals and the chronic economic mismanagement that precipitated the unprecedented economic crisis. \u201cThere is a significant number of voters trying to send a strong message\u2026 that they are very disappointed with the way this country has been governed,\u201d Murtaza Jafferjee of think tank Advocata told AFP. Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, once dismissed as the princeling dynast of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country\u2019s decades-long civil war, is also favoured to make a strong showing. He vowed to ensure transparency in state procurements and fight endemic corruption. The 57-year-old, a former ally and deputy of Wickremesinghe until he renounced his former leader in 2020, has campaigned on a pledge to secure concessions from the IMF. \u201cWe will revise the unfair burden-sharing structure of the IMF-supported tax code revision that is forcing professionals to seek employment abroad,\u201d Premadasa said in his manifesto. Official data showed that Sri Lanka\u2019s poverty rate doubled to 25pc between 2021 and 2022, adding 2.5m people to those already living on less than $3.65 a day. The IMF said reforms were beginning to pay off, with inflation below 5pc from a peak of 70pc at the height of the crisis, and growth slowly returning. \u201cA lot of progress has been made, but the country is not out of the woods yet,\u201d the IMF\u2019s Julie Kozack told reporters in Washington last week. \u201cIt is important to safeguard those hard-won gains. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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