President Wickremesinghe is the first candidate to register with the Electoral Commission as he seeks mandate from voters.
Sri Lanka will hold presidential elections on September 21, the Electoral Commission says, setting the date for a vote that is expected to determine the future of reforms in a country still struggling to emerge from its worst financial crisis in decades.
Nominations for the election are expected to be submitted on August 15, the commission said on Friday. Incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe became the first to register his candidacy on Friday, his office said.
Wickremesinghe, 75, took office in July 2022 after widespread protests caused by the debilitating financial crisis forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee the country and later resign.
Parliament elected Wickremesinghe to serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s five-year term, which began in 2019.
“These elections come after a long period of political and economic upheaval,” said Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernadez, reporting from the capital, Colombo.
“The country is going through a huge economic crisis with people unable to buy essential goods such as food, medicine and fuel.”
Almost 17 million of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people are eligible to vote.
Electoral Commission chairman RMAL Rathnayake told reporters that the election was scheduled for a Saturday to ensure a high turnout.
Emerging from bankruptcy
The Indian Ocean island nation declared bankruptcy in April 2022, with more than $83 billion in debt – more than half of which is owed to foreign creditors.
Last year, Sri Lanka turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help in rescuing the economy and secured a bailout.
Aided by the $2.9 billion bailout program, Wickremesinghe put the shattered economy back together, reducing inflation from 70% in September 2022 to 1.7% in June.
The economy is expected to grow 3 percent in 2024, after contracting 2.3 percent last year and 7.3 percent during the height of the crisis in 2022.
Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who leads the Marxist-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party, are also expected to run for president.
Premadasa and Dissanayake have said publicly that they will look at revamping the IMF program to reduce pressures on the cost of living and ease the burden of debt repayments.
The economic recovery is still fragile and attempts to reverse reforms could precipitate a new crisis, analysts warned.
“What we demand from this election is that the progress we have seen continues,” said Raynal Wickremeratne, co-director of research at Softlogic Stockbrokers.
“Sri Lanka is not in a position to try trial and error.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
