Sri Lankan Prez Wickremesinghe instructs Cabinet to prepare for elections

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has instructed his Cabinet to prepare for the presidential election to be held later this year, as the cash-starved nation strives to recover from its worst economic crisis.

The next presidential election must be called by the elections commission by September and must be held by mid-November.

The parliament election is not due before August of 2025 but President Wickremesinghe has the power to hold it anytime now by dissolving the 225-member Assembly elected in August 2020.

Ending speculation, Wickremesinghe during a Cabinet meeting on Monday announced that the presidential election will be held first and instructed it to prepare for the polls, news portal Daily Mirror reported on Tuesday, quoting sources.

Citing the Constitution, Wickremesinghe, 74, said the presidential election should take place first, and arrangements will be made accordingly.

The election will be the first held after Sri Lanka plunged into a severe economic crisis in 2022. The financially strained country, grappling with acute shortages of essential commodities such as food and fuel, declared bankruptcy, triggering widespread protests that caused the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the island nation. He later resigned.

Wickremesinghe was elected through a Parliament vote after Gotabaya resigned as president in 2022. He can complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa's term, which will end in November this year.

The election is also taking place against the backdrop of an ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) recovery programme initiated last year. Opposition members have been critical of the programme, citing concerns over the imposition of heavy taxes and plans for privatisation aimed at meeting set targets.

A Cabinet note released last month said that an allocation of Rs 10 billion has been made "within the financial stamina of the government" for covering the expenditure of the presidential election and the general election.