People stand in a queue to vote at a polling station during the presidential election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, September 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Polls opened on Saturday (September 21, 2024) in Sri Lanka’s crucial presidential election — the island nation’s first major electoral exercise since its worst economic meltdown in 2022.

Some 17 million people are eligible to vote at over 13,400 polling stations.

Over 200,000 officials have been deployed to conduct the election which will be guarded by 63,000 police personnel. Voting started at 7 a.m. and will continue till 5 p.m. Results are expected by Sunday. Voters will choose among 38 presidential candidates.

Also read: Follow Sri Lanka Presidential poll LIVE updates

With Sri Lankans heading to polls, here are 5 reasons why this election is different:

Three-cornered race:

All past presidential polls in the island nation had two main candidates and one certain winner. This is the first time three candidates are at the fore. Incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa, and popular opposition legislator Anura Kumara Dissanayake are in what appears a close race for the country’s top office.

Substantially altered political landscape:

The country’s two traditional parties — the centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the centre-right United National Party (UNP) — have been decimated over the last few years. Their breakaway formations have detached themselves from the parent parties. The National People’s Power (NPP) Alliance, led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), has emerged as a prominent third front, vowing to shake up the old political establishment.

Although Mr. Wickremesinghe is from and still leads the UNP, he is running as an independent candidate this election.

Mr. Premadasa, who was earlier Deputy Leader of the UNP, now leads the main Opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB or United People’s Front), that broke away from the UNP some years ago.

Mr. Dissanayake has been fielded by the NPP alliance, which is a broad social coalition with the JVP as its core constituent. The JVP is a political party with Marxist-Leninist origins that has led two armed insurrections of Sinhalese youth against the state in the 1970s and 1980s.

A possible second round of counting

Sri Lanka follows a preferential voting system that allows voters to mark three preferences on the ballot. A candidate must secure 50% plus one vote to be declared winner. If no candidate garners the majority vote share, a second count of votes will be used to pick the winner. The preferential votes received by the top two candidates will be factored in, and the contestant who gets the highest number of votes will be named the winner. All past presidential elections in Sri Lanka have yielded a clear winner, ruling out the need for a second vote count. However, in a closely fought three-cornered race, securing over 50 % of the mandate may prove hard for any candidate, necessitating a second round of counting of votes, for the first time in Sri Lanka’s election history.

Economy displaces ethnic issue as central poll plank

The island nation’s last few elections were dominated by promises of “eradicating terrorism” (the country’s three decade-long civil war ended in 2009), and pledges of delivering “good governance”, or “national security”. However, economic concerns have taken centre stage this election, the first to be held after the country experienced a crushing economic crisis in 2022. Candidates have sought to address widespread anger over corruption, and the loud call from citizens to eliminate it.

People’s issues, not personalities, matter

After a mass uprising ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office in 2022, the Rajapaksa clan that dominated Sri Lankan politics for some two decades has been forced into political retreat. Although Namal

“There is little to look forward to in Sri Lanka,” says Kathir*, who will board a plane to Dubai later this month for an electrical maintenance job, leaving behind his parents, wife and two children. “There’s no other option,” says the 35-year-old, who paid 4,00,000 SLR (roughly ₹1,11,500) to an agent to get on a list of workers seeking employment abroad.

Weeks after his planned departure, Sri Lanka will go to the polls to elect a new President. Citizens will have a say for the first time since the painful economic crash in 2022, when they took to the streets amid acute shortages and long power cuts. The mass uprising booted out former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country and resigned.

“How does it matter who comes to power, when our situation remains the same?” Kathir asks dejectedly. Even with two jobs, as an electrician and autorickshaw driver, he struggles to support his family in the central Kandy district, which is teeming with tourists.

ALSO READ:Remember our history, recognise our labour, say Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha Tamils 

The government is targeting more visitors, so the dollars they bring can refill its coffers that ran dry two years ago. Further, it is hoping to boost its foreign exchange earnings from exports and remittances of workers — $ 5.9 billion in 2023 — who have flown out. Nearly 75,000 workers have left the country in the first quarter of 2024, after some 6 lakh people left during the preceding two years, a stark increase in departures, data published by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment showed.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who replaced Mr. Gotabaya, is seeking a mandate to take forward his government’s economic recovery programme. He unfailingly reminds the electorate that fuel queues have vanished, there is no shortage of gas, and the country is on the path to recovery with the nearly $3 billion International Monetary Fund package he signed. He claims credit for restoring stability. Meanwhile, tens of thousands like Kathir are leaving the country to escape precarity.

Enduring deprivation

Families like his, living in the towns of Sri Lanka’s hill country, may still be relatively better off, compared to those working and residing on the tea estates, according to Ponniah Logeswary, of the Kandy-based Human Development Organization, a non-profit working in plantations and rural areas. “Their plight is dire,” she says.

Kandy is one of three districts in Sri Lanka’s scenic Central Province that is home to a sizeable population of Malaiyaha (hill country) Tamils, apart from Sinhalese and Muslims. The Malaiyaha Tamils, whose ancestors were brought by the British to work in plantations two centuries ago, are among Sri Lanka’s poorest.

Some 1.5 lakh workers, mostly women, from the million-strong community work on tea and rubber estates across central and southern Sri Lanka. The Wickremesinghe administration promised to increase their daily wage to SLR 1,700 (about ₹475). After fiercely resisting the wage hike, some of the companies grudgingly agreed to the rate more recently, but tied to targets that estate workers say are nearly impossible to meet. If fair wages remain elusive to workers, their only savings for the future took a beating when the government decided to restructure its domestic debt by recasting pension funds.

“The promise of a higher wage is a joke, because almost no one gets paid the amount,” says Ms. Logeswary. While criticising the companies for “exploiting” workers, she also blames politicians from the community for opting for “a handout culture”, neglecting the rights of the people.

Fighting for rights

While Sri Lankan voters will directly elect their president on September 21, political parties in parliament are pledging support to their preferred candidate based on past alignment and future alliance prospects in the parliamentary elections expected soon. After battling for citizenship until 2003, members of the Malaiyaha Tamil community — a 1948 legislation rendered them stateless — have been demanding decent housing and land rights for decades.

“About 68% of people still live in colonial-era line rooms and don’t own even a little piece of land. Instead of resolving the persisting discrimination, our politicians want to throw crumbs and cultivate people’s loyalties,” Ms. Logeswary fumes.

Decades of neglect made the community more vulnerable than most others in Sri Lanka during the island nation’s worst economic downturn since Independence. The Malaiyaha Tamils living on the estates feel its many impacts, such as job losses, falling incomes and malnutrition, more acutely. The jolt by the crisis and its enduring aftermath are also severely impacting children’s education in the estates, according to Kanchanadevi Kirubakar, a member of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union. Parents are increasingly unable to afford school transportation, stationery, or electricity owing to the high cost. Families are forced to skip meals. “If Covid delivered a blow to schooling in the remote, estate areas where online classes are impossible, the crisis has only worsened their situation,” she says. 

Poll pledges

Addressing an election rally at a ground in nearby Digana town last weekend, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, who is also running for President, underscored the need to improve digital aids and technology in education and governance.

“You may ask how we can afford all this. We will cut all unnecessary state expenses, punish the thieves and weed out corruption,” he says loudly as supporters cheered.

While Mr. Premadasa’s speech focussed mostly on national issues, voters, especially in the hill country, tend to base their judgment on their immediate needs, observes

D. Mathiyugarajah, senior political activist and Kandy district organiser of Mr. Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB or United People’s Force), offers his views.

“In my experience, voters in the hill country do not always vote for ideology. They vote based on issues that need urgent attention. In that sense, they vote for a promise made by an emissary of a national politician,” he notes.

Sri Lanka’s local and provincial bodies are currently defunct — elections have been indefinitely postponed — bringing residents’ hyper-local, infrastructure-related concerns to the fore. Pointing to the rickety path near her estate home near Kandy, R. Mangayarkarasi says: “I wish someone lays a proper road along this stretch so we can bring a vehicle in case of a medical emergency.”

A retired tea estate worker, Ms. Mangayarkarasi now manages her home and takes care of her toddler grandchild. In her view, an accessible road to her home is as important as better job security for her son, who works in a garage, and daughter-in-law, who works long hours in a garment factory.

Sri Lanka is headed for a national election. While some voters are looking for provincial solutions, even as they navigate the national economic crisis, few voice optimism about any candidate delivering on their demands. There are 38 presidential aspirants contesting this election but many voters in the hill country say they are not spoilt for choice.

(*name changed on request)

President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe will contest the Presidential election as an independent candidate, his aide said on July 7.

Deputy Chairman of the United National Party Ruwan Wijewardene confirmed that the presidential election will definitely be held and Mr. Wickremesinghe, 75, will contest the election as an independent candidate, News 1st reported.

“Only one leader possesses the knowledge to solve Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. That is Ranil Wickremesinghe. He has proved it with his actions,” he was quoted as saying by the news portal.

On July 7, Election Commission Chairman R.M.A.L. Ratnayake said the electoral body would be legally empowered after July 17 to announce the date for the election.

Mr. Ratnayake added that the commission will announce the date for the next presidential poll before the end of this month.

The Election Commission in May said the presidential election would be conducted between September 17 and October 16.

Mr. Ratnayake said the commission is currently in the process of putting final touches to the 2024 electoral register which will be the basis for the election. Over 17 million would be eligible to vote in the election as per the revised list, officials said.

In April 2022, the island nation declared its first-ever sovereign default since gaining Independence from Britain in 1948. The unprecedented financial crisis led President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to quit office in 2022 amid civil unrest over his inability to handle the crisis.

In July 2022, Mr. Wickremesinghe was elected through parliament to become stop-gap President for the balance term of Mr. Rajapaksa.

Mr. Wickremesinghe, also the Finance Minister, hasn’t made any public statement on his bid for re-election.

“This election isn’t merely about selecting individuals but about choosing the most effective system for our country’s progress. If you believe in the merits of the current approach, let us proceed accordingly,” the President’s Media Division quoted him as saying earlier.

The government under Mr. Wickremesinghe has set in place hard economic reforms as dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.

President Wickremesinghe last month said that his government has finalised a long-delayed debt restructuring agreement for $5.8 billion with its bilateral lenders, including India and China, in Paris to meet a key condition of an IMF bailout.