Wickremesinghe draws MPs from opposition party for September polls, SLPP threatens action

Colombo: At least 75 MPs from the SLPP party have backed President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s bid for reelection in the September 21 presidential poll even though the party run by the Rajapaksa family has threatened disciplinary action against them, it emerged on Tuesday.

The development comes a day after the Sri Lanka People's Front (SLPP, also known locally by its popular Sinhalese name, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, decided not to back President Wickremesinghe, and instead field its own candidate in the presidential election. Wickremesinghe, 75, last week announced his candidacy as an independent.

“The SLPP’s party's Politburo which met today has decided to field our own candidate under its own symbol of the flower bud,” Sagara Kariyawasam, the General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, told reporters on Monday.

SLPP has been in disarray with several breakaways since former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s younger brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted after the 2022 popular uprising over his inability to tackle the economic crisis and had backed Wickremesinghe then in parliament to become president.

Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon, the state minister of defence, was the first to declare that he would back Wickremesinghe for president irrespective of the party decision.

After the SLPP announcement, an extended group of SLPP MPs visited Wickremesinghe to pledge support defying the party line.

“We have over 75 SLPP MPs in our group to support the president,” Premanath C Dolewatta, a SLPP MP, said.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Wickremesinghe in a Facebook post said he was grateful to those who aligned with him to work towards reviving the economy after Sri Lanka had gone bankrupt in 2022.

He thanked the others who later joined and welcomed those wanting to join him.

Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, stressed that cross-party support was required to turn the island’s economy around based on the IMF-prescribed reforms.

In April 2022, Sri Lanka declared its first-ever sovereign default since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had made external debt restructuring conditional to the $2.9 billion bailout package, of which the third tranche was released to Sri Lanka in mid-June.

The opposition has vowed to revise the IMF programme and remained critical of Wickremesinghe for the financial burdens heaped on people by sticking to the IMF formula.