The ruling party has nominated Namal Rajapaksa to challenge incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe in the September 21 election.
A son of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is set to run in the upcoming presidential election, which will take place as the country faces its worst economic crisis in decades.
Namal Rajapaksa, 38, announced his candidacy for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party on Wednesday at a Buddhist ceremony in the capital, Colombo.
He will face incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, who many analysts consider the favorite, in the September 21 election.
Elected by parliament in July 2022, Wickremesinghe has guided the Indian Ocean nation through its financial crisis, which sparked widespread protests against corruption and mismanagement that forced his predecessor and Namal's uncle, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign and flee the country.
“After careful consideration, the party has decided to make Namal Rajapaksa our presidential candidate,” SLPP general secretary Sagara Kariyawasam said.
Namal, who served as sports minister during his father's presidency, which ended in January 2015, said he was forced to run by circumstances as he was expected to contest only the 2029 presidential election.
“Now we have to sit down and plan the campaign because this is something I did not expect,” Namal Rajapaksa told AFP news agency after his candidacy was announced.
He put his name forward after the expected candidate, businessman Dhammika Perera, withdrew on Tuesday citing “personal reasons”.
Namal said he wanted to be “my own character” but was aware that he would have to live with the positive and negative legacies of his family’s rule.
“That’s something I’ll be dealing with throughout my life, not just in this election,” he said.
Although Mahinda is credited with ending the Tamil separatist war in 2009, there were widespread allegations that troops killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of fighting.
Testing in the midst of the financial crisis
Namal's candidacy will test whether his powerful family, which produced two presidents, has managed to retain its popularity despite the country's economic crisis.
Sri Lanka defaulted on $46 billion of its external debt in April 2022 when it ran out of foreign currency for essential imports. It has since signed a $10 billion restructuring agreement with bilateral creditors and aims to finalize a $12.5 billion debt restructuring with bondholders, efforts Namal said he would support.
Wickremesinghe ran for president twice and lost both. However, he has served as prime minister six times since entering parliament in 1977.
He is seeking a full five-year term to press ahead with his austerity measures, which he says are necessary to shore up the cash-strapped nation's reserves and begin repaying its foreign loans.
Namal's entry turns the presidential election into a battle between four main candidates.
Two other candidates, Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, say they will continue the $2.9 billion IMF bailout negotiated by Wickremesinghe last year but cut taxes and halt privatisations.
Dissanayake, leader of a leftist party, also pledges to jail members of the Rajapaksa family as well as Wickremesinghe, who is accused of blocking corruption investigations during his time in power.
