President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the finance minister, said “by this order levy on imported goods specified in the schedule here to a surcharge at the rate of 50% on applicable customs duty effect from May 16 for a period of three months”. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Colombo:

Sri Lanka, which is slowly recovering from its worst-ever economic crisis, will vote to elect the next President on Saturday. The cash-strapped island nation is currently being led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is seeking a re-election to continue with bold reforms to help revive the economy.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, is seeking a fresh mandate after claiming credit for stabilising the economy and bringing an end to months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.

In 2022, when Ranil Wickremesinghe took charge as President, Sri Lanka was dealing with civil unrest spurred by the economic crisis. There were protests across the nation which led to thousands storming the Presidential palace which was then occupied by Mr Wickremesinghe’s predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country. Mr Wickremesinghe took charge and restored calm and helped revived the economy by taking some tough decisions.

The 2024 election is key to deciding the future of reforms in the economically fragile nation.

Speaking with NDTV, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Thursday that his vision for future ties with India holds a stronger economic relationship. “We want to encourage more investments from India and more tourists from India. We are working together with India on infrastructure projects like the Trincomalee Harbour,” he said.

“I took over as President when the country was in utter chaos and no one thought we could stabilise this fast. But I knew from experience that we could go ahead provided we had the support of the International Monetary Fund and our creditors,” the President said, adding that “I have ensured we come back to normalcy. Law and order is functioning, democracy is functioning and although we have stabilised the economy, now we have to decide our path. Are we going to get into the same old ways or are we working towards (building) a strong export economy? I have asked for a mandate to go ahead.”

However, Mr Wickremesinghe faces a tough electoral battle from two contenders. In total, President Wickremesinghe is among 38 candidates contesting Sri Lanka’s presidential election.

This year’s election is dominated by two major alliances, the SJB (Samagi Jana Balawegaya) and the NPP (National People’s Power), apart from various smaller parties and independent candidates.

Here are the 5 main contenders in the 2024 Sri Lanka Elections:

75-year-old Ranil Wickremesinghe is a lawyer who has served as prime minister for a record six times. His party holds only one seat in parliament and will need to drum up support from key parties to bolster his chances.

As the leader of the United National Party or UNP, he took office in July 2022 after widespread protests unleashed by the debilitating financial crisis forced his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee Sri Lanka and later resign.

The Sri Lankan Parliament elected Ranil Wickremesinghe to serve out the rest of the five-year term of Mr Rajapaksa, who took office in 2019.

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s re-election bid failed to get formal backing from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party with the most seats in the 225-member parliament, but the support of more than 90 lawmakers puts him in strong position. He is contesting as an independent candidate.

The 57 year-old Opposition leader and son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, he leads the Samagi Jana Balawegaya or SJB that separated from Mr Wickremesinghe’s UNP in 2020.

His centrist, more left-leaning party has called for changes to the $2.9 billion bailout programme with the International Monetary Fund and outlined plans to adjust some targets, such as changing taxes to reduce the cost of living.

Premadasa favours a mix of interventionist and free-market economic policies.

The 55-year-old leader, who holds just three seats in parliament, stands for tough anti-corruption measures and pro-poor policies have given a popular boost to his candidacy.

He will contest under the National People’s Power or NPP coalition, which includes his Marxist-leaning party People’s Liberation Front or PLF. His party has traditionally backed stronger state intervention and more closed market economic policies.

A pre-election opinion survey showed Mr Dissanayake was leading in voting preferences at 36%, followed by Mr Premadasa and Mr Wickremesinghe at third.

The 38-year-old leader is a scion of the powerful Rajapaksa family that produced two presidents – his father Mahinda and uncle Gotabaya – Namal is a surprise entrant, as the candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna or SLPP, founded by another uncle, Basil.

He faces the daunting task of keeping the party unified to counter Mr Wickremesinghe’s chances of winning.

40-year-old Nuwan Bopage is the presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Struggle Alliance or PSA. He hopes to tap into the remnants of the massive people’s uprising that deposed Gotabaya Rajapaksa two years ago.

He has taken a strong anti-corruption stance, backs more pro-poor policies and opposes Sri Lanka’s alignment with the IMF programme.
 

The political landscape in Sri Lanka is set to change as its citizens elect a new President on Saturday. Sri Lanka’s 17 million voters will choose from among 39 candidates in the country’s first election after the people’s uprising of 2022, which led to then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ouster.

This year’s election is dominated by two major alliances, the SJB (Samagi Jana Balawegaya) and the NPP (National People’s Power), apart from various smaller parties and independent candidates.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP (United National Party) is contesting as an independent. Wickremesinghe, popularly known as RW, is being supported by many rebel legislators of the SLPP (Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna) headed by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Also in the contest are opposition leader Sajith Premadasa from the SJB alliance; leftist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) – the presidential candidate of NPP – and Mahinda’s son, Namal Rajapaksa, as the SLPP candidate.

Poll surveys and experts suggest that Lankan voters are prioritising issues such as economy, education, health, law, and security. Matters of corruption and wrongdoing among politicians, which dominated the electoral narrative, have receded into the background after the 2022 unrest. Since most governments in the past didn’t solve the corruption issue, people feel it’s better to talk about development. They hope to elect a leader who can pull them out of dire poverty.

Gloomy past

In the last election, held after the Easter bombings on April 21, 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa of SLPP (Namal’s uncle) won a decisive victory and Sajith Premadasa came second. However, three years later, the world saw Sri Lankans oust President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, having endured a steady economic slide. The flawed economic and monetary policies of Gotabaya, along with the COVID-19 pandemic that dented tourism – a chunk of the economy – resulted in an unsustainable debt level. In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt and asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance. The Russia-Ukraine war further aggravated the crisis with rising food, medicine and fuel prices resulting in mass protests never seen before in the country’s history.

Sri Lanka’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya party leader Sajith Premadasa waves to supporters.

The uprising was given the name of ‘Janatha Aragalaya‘ (a Sinhala term). Then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned and subsequently, his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa quit as President and fled. Ranil Wickremesinghe, a former minister, became Prime Minister. In July 2022, Ranil took over as president through a parliamentary vote with the support of the Rajapaksas’ party SLPP, which still has the majority in the legislature. Ranil Wickremesinghe adopted severe austerity measures, with support from the IMF.

New leaders

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s inept governance and his decision to leave the country tarred the image of the Rajapaksa clan and the SLPP the most. Most SLPP MPs are supporting either Ranil or Sajith in this election. Namal Rajapaksa, they say, is just a symbolic candidate to keep the SLPP alive.

Sajith’s SJB has the support of the Tamil and Muslim minorities, who form 11% and 9% of the population.

Though Tamil parties have fielded a common candidate, the largest party ITAK (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi) has extended its support to Sajith Premadasa. In 2019 also, Tamils had voted for Sajith but there was an unprecedented consolidation of Sinhala votes behind Gotabhaya Rajapaksa after the Easter bombings, which helped him win the election.

National People’s Power (NPP) presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayaka gestures during an election rally.

The political space created by Rajapaksas’ dismissal was filled by Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the JVP, who urged Sri Lankans to go for a broader change. Once in the margins, the party has emerged as a credible, major political force.

As far as Ranil Wickremesinghe is concerned, most members of his party UNP are now with Sajith, though he has support from some legislators of the SLPP like state Defence Minister Premitha Bandara Tennakoon. Ranil is banking on his handling of the economic crisis to fetch him votes.

“People want change this time. They don’t want to vote for the same party and old candidates. The new voters, especially on social media, are rooting for Anura Dissanayake. However, on the ground Sajith has a lot of support base, especially in the rural areas,” says Thushara Gooneratne, editor-in-chief, Mawrata News.

“Most people think of Sajith as pro-poor just like his father, former President R Premadasa.”

India’s Stake

In recent times, anti-India sentiment has surged in the neighbourhood, because of various reasons. Be it Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, politicians have been successful in diverting the people’s ire towards India.

For India, the sorry plight of the Tamil population in the north and east of Sri Lanka has been a concern for a long time. Successive Lankan governments have failed to implement the 13th Amendment signed as part of India-Sri Lanka agreement in 1987, which provided for devolution of powers to local governments in the north and the east. India, in fact, raised the Sri Lankan Tamil issue at the 51st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2022. With the new government, India would like to push for the restoration of provincial councils, which would give a measure of autonomy to Lankan Tamils.

India has stakes in a stable and peaceful Sri Lanka. It wants to restrict China’s growing interference in the country because of its geo-strategic location in the Indo-Pacific. The 99-year lease of Hambantota port to China in 2017, feeding the debt-trap narrative, has exacerbated India’s concerns.

Anura Dissanayake’s party has often been seen as close to China, India’s principal geopolitical rival. But for some time now, Dissanayake has enjoyed a different kind of authority within Sri Lankan politics, which has in turn earned him recognition as a rising political force even from India’s point of view. As a reflection of this, New Delhi invited Dissanayake in February to engage with him.

“Whoever wins this time will engage with India. Sajith is pro-India. But even Dissanayake, who was known to be anti-India before. India is important for Sri Lanka’s growth and stability,” says Thushara.

India needs all the goodwill it can command in order to navigate the increasing complexities in the neighbourhood, The escalating regional conflicts and a continuous shift in the global economic order. A friendly, stable neighbourhood is a good start.

Jaffna MP M.A. Sumanthiran. File
| Photo Credit: R. Ragu

The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), a prominent political party representing Tamils of Sri Lanka’s north and east, has said it would consider backing a presidential aspirant who agrees to its demand for a governance structure based on a federal model.

The party’s position, which reiterates its long-standing demand for a just political solution to the civil war-scarred country’s Tamil question, comes ahead of Sri Lanka’s presidential polls scheduled to be held on September 21. It reflects one position from within the island’s visibly divided Tamil polity.

While some, including from the ITAK, its former alliance partners (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), and former Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, are backing a “common Tamil candidate” in the crucial national election, the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) is calling for a boycott of the polls.

Addressing a media conference in the northern Vavuniya district last weekend, ITAK’s Jaffna MP M.A. Sumanthiran said: “As the main party representing the Tamil people, we are telling all candidates openly that we need a governance structure with power devolution based on a federal model, in a merged north and east. In short, this is our political position.”

Three main contenders, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa, and opposition parliamentarian leading a third force Anura Kumara Dissanayake are vying for the country’s top office, in the first election after Sri Lanka’s people’s uprising of 2022 amid a devastating economic crash. All three candidates have visited the north recently and promised to devolve power and develop the region’s economy. However, ITAK members have said they are awaiting the manifestos of the candidates to evaluate their specific proposals, given that the existing 13^th Amendment is widely deemed inadequate by most Tamil parties.

The legislation, which followed the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, guarantees some power to the provincial councils. But in the nearly 40 years since its enactment, it is yet to be fully implemented, prompting some Tamil actors to seek a new, “meaningful” arrangement of power sharing between the Centre and the provinces. Despite a long civil war, and the passing of 15 years since its gory end, Tamils are still left with their historic demand for justice and equality, through substantive political rights.  

In an editorial on the need for a political solution to Sri Lanka’s Tamil speaking people, leading Tamil newspaper Virakesari on Tuesday outlined key initiatives taken in the past in this regard. “Although the Provincial Council system was set up as a solution to the ethnic conflict, some of the powers guaranteed are yet to be devolved [to the provincial councils) till date. Land and police powers have not been provided. Therefore, in the view of Tamil speaking people of the north and east, the reality is that the 13^th Amendment has not fulfilled their political aspirations,” it said, asking presidential aspirants to spell out their proposal and work towards it with the people’s mandate.

Colombo:

Sri Lanka’s government Tuesday formally apologised to the island’s Muslim minority for forcing cremations on Covid victims, disregarding WHO assurances that burials in line with Islamic rites were safe.

The cabinet issued an “apology regarding the compulsory cremation policy during the Covid-19 pandemic”, the government said in a statement.

It said a new law would guarantee the right to burial or cremation to ensure the funeral customs of Muslims or any other community were not violated in future.

Traditionally, Muslims bury their dead facing Mecca. Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhists are typically cremated, as are Hindus.

Muslim representatives in Sri Lanka welcomed the apology, but said their entire community, accounting for about 10 percent of the island’s 22 million population, was still traumatised.

“We will now sue two academics — Meththika Vithanage and Channa Jayasumana — who were behind the forced cremation policy of the government,” Hilmy Ahamed, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, told AFP.

“We will also seek compensation.”

Ahamed said a young Muslim couple suffered untold anguish when their 40-day-old infant was cremated by the state against their wishes.

Then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned burials despite his administration facing international condemnation at the UN Human Rights Council and other forums for violating Muslim funeral norms.

In a book published earlier this month, he defended his action saying he was only carrying out “expert advice” from Vithanage, a professor of natural resources, not to let Covid victims be interred.

She has no medical background.

Rajapaksa halted his forced cremations policy in February 2021 following an appeal from then Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan during a visit to Sri Lanka.

The government then allowed burials at the remote Oddamavadi area in the island’s east under strict military supervision — but without the participation of the bereaved family.

Rajapaksa was forced out of office two years ago following months of protests over an unprecedented economic crisis, which had led to shortages of food, fuel and medicines.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Colombo:

PhonePe on Wednesday announced a partnership with LankaPay to allow its users to pay using UPI across Sri Lanka.

At an event to mark the collaboration, PhonePe said its app users travelling to Sri Lanka can make payments using UPI across LankaPay QR merchants.

The transactions will be facilitated by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and LankaPay National Payment Network.

Users can scan LankaQR code to make secure and quick payments without carrying cash or calculating currency conversions. The amount will be debited in INR, showing the currency exchange rate.

PhonePe’s CEO, International Payments, Ritesh Pai, said the collaboration with LankaPay offers unparalleled convenience to Indian tourists who can now use a familiar and secure payment method while travelling and paying across LankaQR merchant points.

“We are excited about the potential of this collaboration that would enhance payment experience to Indian tourists and business travellers during their stay in Sri Lanka and also provide the merchants with a cost-effective proposition to card payments,” LankaPay CEO Channa de Silva said.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe mentioned about the collaboration’s capacity to unlock new opportunities, enhance competitiveness and the benefits that it would bring to Sri Lankan merchants.

Speaking at the event, Santosh Jha, High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, said the UPI launch is an important part of a larger goal for both countries to collaborate through a digital partnership.

“India is also supporting Sri Lanka in the development of its Unique Digital Identity Program and other components of the Digital Stack that has immense transformative potential for Sri Lanka and the bilateral economic partnership,” Jha added.

Launched in August 2016, the PhonePe digital payments app has more than 520 million registered users and a digital payments acceptance network of 38 million merchants. PhonePe processes over 230 million daily transactions.

The PhonePe Group has also expanded into financial services and consumer tech businesses.

There was also a panel discussion on ‘The Future of Digital Payments in Sri Lanka: Opportunities for Sri Lankan Businesses’ as part of the event.

National Savings Bank GM/CEO Shashi Kandambi, Hatton National Bank PLC COO Sanjay Wijemanne, LOLC Finance PLC Chairman Conrad Dias, and Dialog Finance Chairperson PLC Renuka Fernando discussed ways by which businesses can leverage digital payment technologies and tap into a wider market to stay competitive in an evolving economic landscape.

Key stakeholders from Sri Lanka, including representatives from the banking and tourism sectors, payment system providers and business associations, attended the event.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe
| Photo Credit: AP

Sri Lanka will hold presidential election between September 17 and October 16, the country’s top electoral body announced on Thursday.

In a notice signed by its chairman R.M.A.L. Ratnayake, the Election Commission said it will call for nominations to hold the Presidential election within the specified timeframe in terms of the provisions of the Constitution, according to local media reports.

It said that the presidential election will be held on a day between September 17 and October 16.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is expected to contest the presidential election under a new symbol, his top aide said last month.

In May 2022, Mr. Wickremesinghe replaced Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister following anti-government protests over the unprecedented economic crisis in the island nation. Two months later, he replaced Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the President to serve the balance term until the end of 2024.

Mr. Wickremesinghe, 75, will represent several parties as a national candidate, Senior Presidential Advisor and UNP senior leader Ashu Marasinghe said last month.

The veteran politician has led the United National Party (UNP) since 1994. He has served as prime minister on five occasions, leading six governments.

President Wickremesinghe may have a face-up with his cabinet colleague Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who is currently serving as the Minister of Justice.

Former president Maithripala Sirisena, the chairman of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), recently said that Rajapakshe, 65, would be his party’s candidate in the presidential election.

 A fortnight after Sri Lanka switched to a new visa issuing system, authorities are facing a backlash over higher visa costs that could deter tourists, “Indian involvement”, and “corruption” in the subject minister’s push to outsource visa processing.