Voting concludes in crucial Sri Lankan presidential polls

COLOMBO: Voting for the crucial presidential elections concluded at 4 pm in Sri Lanka on Saturday in the island nations' first poll since its worst economic meltdown in 2022.

Officials are yet to release the final voting percentage. By 2 pm, more than 60 per cent of the eligible 17 million eligible people had voted, they said.

“At 4 pm, we will try to start postal vote counting and at 6 pm, we would like to start normal counting. Within two or three hours after the counting of votes starts, we can display the results,” said Colombo City Deputy Election Commissioner MKSKK Bandaramapa earlier in the day.

The first result can be released by midnight, Election Commissioner General Saman Sri Ratnayake was quoted as saying by The Daily Mirror news portal.

The election will be a test for incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe who has claimed credit for putting the country on the road to economic recovery.

Analysts said this election is the most keenly contested of all presidential elections since 1982 with 38 candidates in the fray.

Some 17 million people are eligible to vote at over 13,400 polling stations. Over 2,00,000 officials have been deployed to conduct the election which will be guarded by 63,000 police personnel.

The Police Elections Bureau said voting proceeding peacefully, with no reports of violence.

Wickremesinghe, 75, is seeking re-election for a five-year term as an independent candidate, riding on the success of his efforts to pull the country out of the economic crisis, which many experts hailed as one of the quickest recoveries in the world.

As Sri Lanka sank into economic collapse in 2022, a popular uprising led its then then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

Wickremesinghe was appointed as president by Parliament a week after.