COLOMBO, July 26, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Sri Lanka's first presidential elections since an unprecedented economic crisis spurred widespread unrest will be held in September, the election commission said Friday.

The election will be the first test of the public mood since the height of the 2022 downturn, which caused months of food, fuel and medicine shortages across the island nation.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, who took office after street protests forced his predecessor to flee the country, has strongly hinted he plans to run.

He will face at least two rivals campaigning against austerity measures his government imposed to satisfy an International Monetary Fund bailout package.

The five-week campaign announced by the commission will conclude with a September 21 vote in a country still struggling with a fragile economic recovery and endemic discontent over cost of living issues.

Economic issues are expected to dominate the campaign as the country emerges from its worst-ever recession in 2022, when the GDP shrank by a record 7.8 percent.

Inflation has since returned to normal levels from its peak of 70 percent at the height of the crisis.

Wickremesinghe has also successfully negotiated a restructure of Sri Lanka's $46 billion foreign debt with bilateral lenders including China, following a 2022 government default.

But his policies to balance the government's books by hiking taxes and withdrawing generous utility subsidies have been deeply unpopular with the public.

While the months-long food, fuel and medicine shortages seen at the peak of the economic crisis are now a distant memory, many Sri Lankans say Wickremesinghe's austerity measures have left them struggling to make ends meet.

Opposition parties have vowed to renegotiate terms of the $2.9 billion IMF bailout Wickremesinghe negotiated last year.

The president's main challenger so far is Sajith Premadasa, 57, a one-time party ally and current opposition leader.

Premadasa has vowed to continue with economic reforms and the IMF programme but pledged to cushion the public by reducing the tax increases Wickremesinghe imposed to shore up state revenue.

A leftist party is also fielding its leader, 55-year-old former agriculture minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is campaigning against plans to privatise state companies

Wickremesinghe took office following the government default in 2022, after a huge crowd stormed predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa's compound.

Rajapaksa, who was accused of steering Sri Lanka into the crisis through economic mismanagement, temporarily fled abroad and issued his resignation from Singapore.

Local elections were due to be held last year but postponed indefinitely after the government insisted it had no money to conduct a nationwide vote.

More than 17 million Sri Lankans over the age of 18 are eligible to cast a ballot.

The election commission has allocated $33 million (10 billion rupees) for this year's presidential poll.