Cash-strapped Sri Lanka was voting for its next president Saturday in an effective referendum on an unpopular International Monetary Fund austerity plan enacted after the island nation's unprecedented financial crisis. President Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting an uphill battle for a fresh mandate to continue belt-tightening measures that stabilised the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages. His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn in 2022 saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor, who promptly fled the country.
"I've taken this country out of bankruptcy," Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot in the morning. "I will now deliver Sri Lanka a developed economy, developed social system and developed political system." But Wickremesinghe's tax hikes and other measures, imposed per the terms of a $2.
9 billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet. "The country has been through a lot," lawyer and musician Soundarie David Rodrigo told AFP after casting her vote in Colombo. "So I just don't want to see another upheaval coming soon.
" Wickremesinghe is tipped to lose to one of two formidable challengers. One is Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, the leader of a once-marginal Marxist party tarnished by its violent past. The party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than four percent of the vote in the last .