By Uditha Jayasinghe and Sudipto Ganguly
COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lankans voted on Saturday in an election to choose a president who will be tasked with jump-starting the country’s fragile economic recovery from its worst financial crisis in decades.
The election is expected to be a close contest between President Ranil Wickremesinghe, main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Marxist-leaning rival Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Dissanayake had a narrow lead in a recent opinion poll.
Voting ended at 4:00 p.m. (10:30 GMT) and counting began later. The Election Commission is expected to announce the results on Sunday. Postal votes will be counted first, senior commission official Saman Sri Ratnayake told Reuters.
The country’s electoral system allows voters to cast three preferential votes for candidates of their choice. If no candidate gets 50% in the first count, a second round of recounting determines the winner between the two candidates with the most preferential votes. Analysts say that is likely to be the case, given the close nature of the election.
Voting on Saturday proceeded peacefully across the South Asian island nation, with queues outside polling stations growing longer as the day progressed, local television channels showed. More than 13,000 polling stations were set up and 250,000 civil servants were deployed to manage the election, the electoral body said.
More than 17 million of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people were eligible to vote in the election, which featured some 38 candidates.
At Visakha Vidyalaya, a school about 15 kilometres from Colombo, voting was seen in full force early in the morning as families, some accompanying elderly parents, lined up along coir ropes creating orderly lines for voters.
“I think we desperately need change and I think a lot of people feel the same way. For us to have a future, the whole country must have a future first,” said Niroshan Perera, 36, a Dissanayake supporter.
These were Sri Lanka’s first elections since the economy faltered in 2022 due to a severe shortage of foreign currency, leaving the country unable to pay for imports of essential goods including fuel, medicines and cooking gas.
Thousands of protesters marched in Colombo in 2022 and occupied the president’s office and residence, forcing then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and later resign.
Thanks to a $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the economy has staged a tentative recovery, but the high cost of living remains a critical issue for many voters.
Although inflation cooled to 0.5% last month from a crisis peak of 70%, and the economy is forecast to grow in 2024 for the first time in three years, millions of people remain mired in poverty and debt, with many pinning their hopes for a better future on their next leader.
“This is an election that will change the history of Sri Lanka. People are voting with enthusiasm,” Dissanayake said after casting his ballot at a temple on the outskirts of Colombo.
The winner will have to ensure Sri Lanka adheres to the IMF programme until 2027 to put its economy on a stable growth path, reassure markets, attract investors and help a quarter of its population out of poverty.
“The people have to decide the future of this country. I urge everyone to vote peacefully,” Wickremesinghe said, accompanied by his wife, after voting at the University of Colombo.
“We have stabilized the government and the democratic system. I am glad that I was able to make an important contribution to this.”