Sri Lanka Brief Update: Presidential Election 2024, Pre-Election Fact Sheet

1. The ninth presidential election of Sri Lanka will be held on 21 September 2024. A record number of 39 candidates are contesting for the presidency. The list of candidates is here.
2. Opinion polls show that only three candidates have considerable favourability among the voters. They are Sajith Premadasa (age 57) of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), Anura Kumara Disanayaka (age 55) of National People’s Power (NPP), and independent candidate president Ranil Wickremasinghe (age 75).
3. Anura Kumara Disanayeka (AKD) is the only candidate officially invited by India and China to visit both countries.
4. Both Dissanayake and Premadasa have promised to renegotiate the agreement Wickremasinghe Govt signed with the IMF.
5. Alliances back all three candidates. SJB has more minority parties in its alliance than independent candidate Wickremasinghe. NPP has no minority political parties supporting it.
6. 90 plus MPs of the Rajapaksa family-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) have joined President Wickremesinghe leaving SLPP. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s eldest son MP Namal Rajapaksa (37) is the SLPP candidate.
7. Other known candidates are four-time Minster of Justice Wijedasa Rajapaksa, Derana TV and print media network owner Dilith Jayaweera, Attorney at Law and rights activist Nuwan Bopage, and former MP Pakiyaselvam Ariyanethran.
8. Ariyanethran is the common Tamil candidate of several parties that stand for Tamil National Nationalism. The parties back him are Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Tamil People’s National Alliance, Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF, Tamil National Party, Tamil National Green Organization, Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front (ENDLF) and seven civil organizations.
9. Dilith Jayaweera is backed by earlier pro-Rajapaksa extreme Sinhala Buddhist politicians like Wimal Weerawansa (MP), Udaya Gammanpila (MP) Gevindu Kumarathunga (MP), and Vasudeva Nanayakkara’s tiny Trotskyite party and Sri Lanka Communist party.
10. Nuwan Bopage represents JVP breakaway Frontline Socialist Party which believes in revolutionary people’s struggle to capture state power. They do not believe in parliamentary politics. He contests under a front organisation People’s Struggle Alliance with the umbrella symbol.
11. Independent candidate President Ranil Wickremasinghe’s economic and political agenda is neo-liberalism. SJB leader Sajith Premadasa’s agenda is closer to Social Democracy. NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s policies are closer to left-socialist liberalism. Marxist-Leninist JVP leads NPP.
12. The Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK or TNA) party has not yet declared its position regarding the Presidential Election and the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) is engaged in campaigning for voters to boycott the presidential election.
13. 17.1 million voters will be eligible to cast their votes in the upcoming presidential to election to elect the ninth executive president of Sri Lanka. Among them, there will be one million new voters.
14. To win the presidential election in the first round a candidate needs 50+% of votes cast according to the constitution.
15. Considering 80% of the registered voters as usual will vote (80% of 17100000 = 13,680,000) a candidate needs to obtain approximately 6.9 million votes to win at the first count (50% of 13,680,000 = 6,840,000).
16. In a three-corner contest obtaining 6.9 million votes is almost a difficult task.
17. In case no candidate obtains 50+% then the second and third preferences of all candidates, excluding the first and second candidates will be counted. How second and third preference is counted is If no decisive change of obtained votes by the first and second candidates after the second count, the first candidate becomes the President.
18. Sri Lanka population consists of Sinhalese 74.9%, Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%, Sri Lankan Moors 9.2%, upcountry Tamil 4.2%, other 0.5%. Out of the three front-runners, no single candidate has overwhelming support among the minorities.
19. Numerous internet-based polls show that AKD enjoys overwhelming popularity among the Youth. However, his popularity is much less among Tamil and Muslim voters, according to some other polls.
20. On the assumption that 80% of the registered voters will vote, around 10 million (75% of 13,680,000 =10,260,000 votes cast will be Sinhalese and minority votes cast will be around 3 million plus. Out of this number, 1,258,560 are Muslims, 1,532,160 are Sri Lanka Tamils and 574,560 are Upcountry Tamils.
21. The Muslim voters and Upcountry Tamil voters may play a decisive role than the North-East Tamil vote in the 2024 presidential election in Sri Lanka.

The End.

Compiled by Sunanda Deshapriya