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COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will hold its presidential election on Saturday in a vote that will decide the future of the South Asian nation struggling to recover from its financial collapse in 2022, which spurred a popular uprising and drove former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from power.

In the two years since the worst crisis in history hit the country and Rajapaksa fled, his successor, current President Ranil Wickremesinghe, has managed to introduce policy reforms to obtain an International Monetary Fund bailout.

While the austerity measures he introduced — including tax hikes — eased the shortage of essentials such as food, fuel, and medicines, they did not help his popularity.

Wickremesinghe, 75, will nevertheless be among the main figures in the election running as an independent candidate.

A six-time prime minister belonging to the old guard, which Sri Lankans blame for the 2022 crisis, he will compete with over 30 candidates running for office. Among them are Anura Kumara Dissanayake, 55, the leader of a Marxist-led coalition National People’s Power, and Sajith Premadasa, 57, Wickremesinghe’s former deputy and the leader of the largest opposition party, the United People’s Power.

“The election is significant because there is a degree of ideological polarization that we have never seen in a Sri Lankan election, at least since pre-independence really, (since) 1947,” Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, academic and Sri Lanka’s former envoy to the UN, told Arab News.

Elections have traditionally been contested between coalitions of center-right and center-left parties but in the upcoming vote, competition will involve a boarder political spectrum.

“The sitting president is a right-wing conservative, Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe. And the main challenger is the leader of the opposition, Mr. Sajid Premadasa, who has repeatedly called himself a social democrat,” Jayatilleka said.

“He’s a moderate progressive of a centrist nature, running against a sitting right-wing president, on the one hand, and a former revolutionary, still Marxist-Leninist, Anura Kumara Dissanayake … on the other. This is very, very new for Sri Lanka.”

The fourth main contender is Namal Rajapaksa, the 38-year-old heir apparent to the Rajapaksa and the son of Mahinda Rajapaksa — Gotabaya’s brother who had served several terms both as Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister.

“Namal Rajapaksa is running for the presidency now, but he’s a serious contender for the presidency next time, in five years,” Jayatilleka said.

“This is a trial run … It’s aimed to retain the vote base of the Rajapaksas and their party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Sri Lanka People’s Front) and prevent that vote from going with certain ministers of their party, who have defected to the side of President Wickremesinghe.”

Sri Lanka has a presidential system, in which the president heads the government and can appoint and dismiss the prime minister and the other ministers.

Almost 17 million of the island nation’s 22 million people are eligible to take part in Saturday’s vote, where they can select three candidates from the ballot paper.

The first preferences will be counted first and the candidate who secures more than 50 percent of the valid votes will win. If there is no clear winner, the first two candidates will be retained, and the ballot papers will be checked again to see if either of them was a second or third preference.

Those votes will be added to the tally of the two candidates and the one who receives the highest number will be declared the winner.

While the country’s economy is the key issue in the election, Dr. B.A. Husseinmiya, a Sri Lankan historian and former professor at the University of Brunei Darussalam, said there is also a need for change due to public disillusionment with mainstream politicians.

The mass protest movement that erupted in 2022 against then-president Rajapaksa and his prime minister brother, and forced both to quit, was what gave rise to the leftist National People’s Power.

“It’s a most historic occasion when an underdog like the NPP emerges so fast, which is (the result of) all the mistakes the past regimes have made,” Husseinmiya told Arab News.

“I think people everywhere are coming to believe that change is very important if you want to move forward.”

Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron was on Friday weighing a new government proposed by Prime Minister Michel Barnier which includes new faces in almost all key posts and marks a fresh shift to the right.
The full cabinet line-up was due to be announced later Friday or by Sunday at the latest, multiple sources told AFP, ending two-and-a-half months of deadlock created by inconclusive legislative elections that wrapped up in July.
While there appeared to be no major surprises or big name entrants into the cabinet, there are set to be new foreign, economy and interior ministers, with only the defense minister remaining unchanged among the key offices of state.
Barnier is proposing Europe Minister Jean-Noel Barrot as foreign minister, a source close to Macron’s political faction, asking not to be named, told AFP.
The move would be a major promotion for the 41-year-old, whose slick media appearances have impressed observers, but he would face the challenge of boosting France’s presence on the international stage.
Meanwhile Bruno Retailleau, who heads the faction of the right-wing The Republicans (LR) in France’s upper house Senate, is to take on the interior ministry, according to several sources who spoke to AFP.
Landing the interior ministry, which oversees the police and domestic security, would be seen as a major success for the right.
And another meteoric rise will see Antoine Armand, 33, the head of parliament’s economic affairs commission installed as economy minister.
One key person said to be staying on is Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu who is believed to enjoy a close and trusting relationship with Macron.
Barnier was at the Elysee Palace late Thursday to discuss the nominations with Macron.
The list is a government “ready to act in the service of the French people,” the premier’s office said. It later said the new government would be unveiled “before Sunday.”
Macron could seek to veto Barnier’s proposals but doing so would cause immense tensions with his premier at this stage.
Sources added that names still need to be vetted to ensure they have no conflicts of interest before entering government, as is customary.
But Macron “will not censor any name,” said a source close to him asking not to be named.
There had been tensions earlier this week between centrist Macron and Barnier, who comes from the LR, over the balance of the government notably at a lunch earlier this week that reports said was far from cordial.
Le Monde daily said that Barnier had even raised the possibility of resigning just days into the job. But the tensions were then resolved on Thursday.
Politics in France has been deadlocked since the June-July snap legislative elections left it with a hung parliament.
Barnier, the European Union’s former top Brexit negotiator and a right-winger, was appointed earlier this month by Macron in an attempt to breach the impasse.
Key posts were vacant with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stepping down after occupying his post since Macron came to power in 2017 and Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne tapped by Macron to be France’s new EU commissioner.
However there seems to be no place in the cabinet for the ambitious Gerald Darmanin, interior minister since 2020 and who had reportedly long coveted the job of foreign minister.
The 73-year-old Barnier minister has faced a raft of challenges since taking office.
The prime minister had warned on Wednesday that France’s budgetary situation was “very serious.”
France was placed on a formal procedure for violating EU budgetary rules before Barnier was picked as head of government.
Macron had hoped to reassert his relative majority in parliament by calling for the elections in late June and early July, but the plan backfired.
A left-wing alliance nabbed the most seats in the lower house National Assembly, but does not have a working majority.
Macron’s centrist faction is now the second largest bloc.
The far right is third, but the anti-immigration National Rally emerged from the election as the single largest party.