COLOMBO: Cash-strapped Sri Lanka will vote for its next president Saturday in an effective referendum on an unpopular International Monetary Fund austerity plan enacted after the island nation’s unprecedented financial crisis. President Ranil Wickremesinghe urged voters to give him a fresh mandate to continue with austerity measures he says stabilized the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.

“We must continue with reforms to end bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said at his final rally in Colombo on Wednesday night. “We must build a new economy.” He has restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn in 2022 saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor, who promptly fled the country. “Decide if you want to go back to the period of terror, or progress”, he added. But Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other belt-tightening measures, imposed in line with a $2.9-billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling.

Experts warn that Sri Lanka’s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island’s $46-billion foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default. “The election will largely be a referendum on how Wickremesinghe’s government has handled the economic crisis and the ensuing modest recovery,” the International Crisis Group said this week.

It added that many citizens were suffering “enormous hardship at the same time as Colombo cuts costs and takes other austerity measures perceived by the public as unfair”. As election rallies ended on Wednesday night after a 56-day campaign period, the country entered a “cooling off period” of two days ahead of Saturday’s vote.

Some 17.1 million people are eligible to vote. Over 200,000 officials have been deployed to conduct the election which will be guarded by 63,000 police. Results are expected by Sunday. Police spokesman Nihal Talduwa told reporters in Colombo that the campaign had been relatively peaceful with 464 polls-related complaints, but no serious crimes.

Wickremesinghe faces two formidable challengers including Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, the leader of a once-marginal Marxist party tarnished by its violent past. The party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and won less than four percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections. But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for the 55-year-old Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture. “The 21st (voting day) will be the beginning of a long journey to completely change the system of governance in Sri Lanka,” Dissanayaka told his rally decorated with red flags at a suburb of Colombo. Analysts say he is likely to benefit from public anger over graft scandals and the chronic economic mismanagement that precipitated the unprecedented economic crisis.

“There is a significant number of voters trying to send a strong message... that they are very disappointed with the way this country has been governed,” Murtaza Jafferjee of think tank Advocata told AFP. Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, once dismissed as the princeling dynast of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, is also favored to make a strong showing. He vowed to ensure transparency in state procurements and fight endemic corruption.

The 57-year-old, a former ally and deputy of Wickremesinghe until he renounced his former leader in 2020, has campaigned on a pledge to secure concessions from the IMF. “We will revise the unfair burden-sharing structure of the IMF-supported tax code revision that is forcing professionals to seek employment abroad,” Premadasa said in his manifesto. Official data showed that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate doubled to 25 percent between 2021 and 2022, adding 2.5 million people to those already living on less than $3.65 a day.

The IMF said reforms were beginning to pay off, with inflation below five percent from a peak of 70 percent at the height of the crisis, and growth slowly returning. “A lot of progress has been made, but the country is not out of the woods yet,” the IMF’s Julie Kozack told reporters in Washington last week. “It is important to safeguard those hard-won gains.” — AFP