Record number of candidates in Sri Lankan presidential race

Colombo: A total of 39 candidates, including three minority Tamils and two Buddhist monks, are in the fray for next month's presidential election in Sri Lanka, the election commission announced here on Thursday. However, there was not a single woman candidate among the 39 presidential aspirants for the September 21 election.

In the last presidential election in 2019, there were 35 candidates while there were only six candidates in the first-ever presidential election held in October 1982.

On the last day to file papers on Thursday, nominations were accepted from 9 am to 11 am local time after Wednesday's closure of paying deposits to the contest.

There were 40 deposits paid but one of them has chosen not to file nominations.

R M A L Rathnayake, the election commission chief, said there were three objections against three candidates, which were rejected by the commission.

There were more than 17 million eligible voters in the 22 electoral districts throughout the island nation.

Besides incumbent President Wickremesinghe, the other prominent candidates are Namal Rajapaksa, the 38-year-old heir to the Rajapaksa dynasty, the main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the Marxist JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

This will be the first election since Sri Lanka plunged into economic crisis when the island nation declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022, its first since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. Almost civil-war-like conditions and months of public protests led to the fleeing of the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Significantly, amongst the 39 is one candidate representing a faction of the public protest movement of 2022 against the Rajapaksas. Called 'Aragalaya' or 'struggle is in the ring,' the months-long protest was launched to hold the Rajapaksa family accountable for the unprecedented economic crisis leading to the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.