By Uditha Jayasinghe
COLOMBO (Reuters) – Thirty-nine candidates for Sri Lanka’s presidential election submitted nominations on Thursday as the Indian Ocean island nation prepares for a Sept. 21 vote key to charting its path out of a gruelling financial crisis.
The election will be Sri Lanka’s first major poll since it ran out of foreign reserves, sending its economy into freefall and forcing it to default on its foreign debt in 2022.
“The Election Commission believes we will get the support of political parties, media, civil society and the public to have a peaceful and transparent election,” its chairman, R. M. Ratnayake, said while accepting the nomination papers.
Two Buddhist monks were among the 40 candidates, one of the highest such figures on record, who had registered with the election panel to contest the vote, in which about 17 million Sri Lankans are eligible to cast ballots.
But only 39 arrived on Thursday at the Election Commission to submit nomination papers and seek its approval to launch their campaigns.
Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Marxist-leaning parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake are seen as frontrunners.
After being elected by parliament in July 2022, Wickremesinghe, 75, has shepherded the island through its worst financial crisis in decades, which triggered widespread protests and forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign.
A surprise entrant to the fray is Namal Rajapaksa, 38, one of 225 lawmakers and the eldest son of two-time president Mahinda Rajapaksa, as the candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, which has a parliamentary majority.
The winner will have to shore up the fragile economic recovery, implement a four-year $2.9-billion programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), finalise a $12.5-billion debt restructuring and focus on achieving sustainable growth.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by YP Rajesh and Clarence Fernandez)
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