Colombo, SRI LANKA – This week, the people of Sri Lanka will go to the polls to decide who will run the country for the next five years. The choice they make may decide whether the country manages to stagger its way back to full stability or slide back to where it was two years ago.
The way Sri Lankan elections work is through a form of instant run-off voting. Voters can rank up to three candidates, and if any candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the first ranking, they win the election. If nobody gets the majority, they then use the second and third rankings instead.
This year, two of Sri Lanka’s political titans – the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party – have fragmented, leaving large numbers of voters with no one to support.
The election is Saturday, Sept. 21. Results are expected within a day or two.
The winner of the last election, Gotabhaya Rajapaksha was ousted from the presidency more than two years ago, and for the first time in nearly two decades a member of his family is not a frontrunner in the race.
So out of the 38 nominees, who are the main candidates?
Firstly, there is President Ranil Wikramasinghe, who is seeking re-election. A bastion of Sri Lankan politics for 40 years, Wikramasinghe was appointed prime minister by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa after the resignation of his brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had been prime minister. After Rajapaksa fled, Wikramasinghe was appointed to by parliament to serve the remainder of his term.
Formerly of the United National Party, Wikramasinghe is now running as an independent candidate, and one of his main talking points is how he guided the nation with a steady hand after its crippling economic crisis in 2022. Sri Lanka has improved since then, mainly due to a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Another factor is that, to many people, Wikramasinghe represents the corruption that plagued the Rajapaksha era.
One of Wikramasinghe’s main opponents is Sajith Premadasa, leader of the opposition. Son of assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, Sajith Premadasa has been a major voice in Sri Lankan politics for nearly three decades.
Leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party, Premadasa has advocated for a more liberal Sri Lanka. He attempts to distinguish himself from the corruption of the Rajapakshe era. But he turned down becoming prime minister under Rajapaksa, the role Wikramasinghe took before eventually becoming president, which led some people to question his judgement.
The final major candidate is arguably the most surprising. Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the leader of the leftist coalition, the National People’s Power. It is primarily made up of Dissanayake’s own party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. What’s surprising is that in the 1970s and ‘80s the party had two separate, violent Marxist uprisings in attempts to overthrow the government that Dissanayake now wants to run.
Dissanayake’s party follows a primarily Marxist ideology, but Dissanayake is mainly campaigning on an anti-corruption ticket. He presents himself as a voice of change who will try to end corruption once and for all. This has made him extremely popular in rural areas.
But Dissanayake has been extremely outspoken against the IMF deal, and his proposed policies seem to violate it. Considering that the IMF is the main barrier keeping the country from falling back into a crisis, undermining it seems to be a very dangerous thing to do.
There are other candidates. Namal Rajapaksa (son of Mahinda) is running with the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, and other major faces in politics are running. None of them, though, loom quite as large as Wikramasinghe, Premadasa and Dissanayake.
This election is many things. Not only is it the closest Dissanayake’s party has gotten to power since 1989, it also represents a turning point from the era of Rajpaksas and the beginning of something new. What that will mean for Sri Lanka is yet to be seen.
Shanish Fernando is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
