The contest will principally be between Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe and former Minister Dullas Alahapperuma with Anura Kumara Dissanayake being the “also ran”.
The Sri Lankan Presidential election to be held on Wednesday, July 20, is expected to be a close contest with two of the three candidates being formidable. Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe and former Minister Dullas Alahapperuma are the principal candidates.
Wickremesinghe is the candidate of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the Rajapaksa clan. Alahapperuma has the support of the principal opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and a section of the SLPP to which he belong till April this year. In fact, Alahapperuma’s name was proposed by the chairman of the SLPP, Prof. G.L.Peiris.
Dissanayake is the weakest of the three candidates as he represents the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which has only three MPs.
Earlier, Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the SJB cum Leader of the Opposition, was to contest. But on Tuesday, he declined and instead proposed the name of Alahapperuma in order not to divide the anti-Wickremesinghe votes. This is posing a real danger to Wickremesinghe.
Despite his hard work to lift Sri Lanka from the economic quagmire since he took over as Prime Minister in May, Wickremesinghe is dubbed a “Rajapaksas’ stooge” by those agitating against the Rajapaksas and their legacy.
Till April this year, when he resigned from the SLPP blaming the Rajapaksas for Sri Lanka’s economic disaster, Alapapperuma was a second-rung leader of the SLPP holding cabinet posts. Therefore, he could get the support of SLPP MPs who have grievances against the Rajapaksas. With the support of this group and the SJB, Alahapperuma is a powerful candidate. Besides, Allahapperuma has the support of the 11-party alliance, which had earlier broken away from the SLPP.
The 10-member Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by former Sri Lankan President Maithripla Sirisena has decided to remain neutral. But attempts are being made by the Alahapperuma-SJB camp to rope the SLFP MPs in. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), with 14 MPs, is yet to decide whether to vote for Alahapperuma or remain neutral. There is speculation that some of them will cross over to the Wickremesinghe camp. The Muslim MPs are also divided. While most are ideologically close to the SJB, there are others who could go with SLPP, if given the right bait. It is said that millions are being bandied about.
Apart from these alignments, a number of MPs, across party lines, believe that only Wickremesinghe has the experience to tackle the country’s economic problems and negotiate with the IMF and the West for debt relief and forex infusion. In the past few days, since the end of the ‘Go Gota Home” and “Ranil Go Home” agitations, fuel and cooking gas availability has improved and there have been some price reductions.
However, there is no clear winner in sight yet. A variety of factors are expected to influence the decision of each one of the 225 MPs, who are the electoral college for this mid-term election for the Sri Lankan Presidency. It was necessitated by the flight of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from the country last week following a three-month agitation which was peaceful for the most part but turned violent in the end.
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