Heavily indebted Sri Lanka votes in election to decide economic future
Millions of Sri Lankans were casting their votes on Saturday to elect a president who will face the task of bolstering the South Asian country’s fragile economic recovery following its worst financial crisis in decades.
Millions of Sri Lankans were casting their votes on Saturday to elect a president who will face the task of bolstering the South Asian country’s fragile economic recovery following its worst financial crisis in decades.
More than 17 million of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people are eligible to vote in an election that has shaped up to be a close contest between President Ranil Wickremesinghe, main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Marxist-leaning challenger Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who led in one recent opinion poll.
Well-organized polling booths manned by public officials and police guided Sri Lankans on how to cast their vote as citizens in Colombo, the country’s biggest city, lined up after voting began at 7 a.m. (8:30 p.m. ET).
At Visakha Vidyalaya, a school about 9 miles from Colombo, brisk polling was seen early in the morning as families, some of them accompanying their ageing parents, lined up next to coir ropes that created orderly lines for voters.
A large blow-up of the ballot paper was visible at the entrance to the booth set up next to blooming flower beds and a stretch of classrooms.
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