Sri Lanka presidential election 2024: Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake are in a close race for the country’s top office Today World News

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