COLOMBO: Three top leaders, including PM-turned-acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe, are to contest the first-ever race for Sri Lanka's Presidency on Wednesday, July 20.

Wickremesinghe will face opposition from a faction of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, the party of former President Rajapaksa (SLPP).

Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the Samgai Jana Balawegaya (SJB) or United People's Power party and the leader of the opposition, withdrew from the race and suggested Dullas Alahapperuma, a former media minister in the Rajapaksa administration and a member of the SLPP, for the position of president. SLPP chairman G. L. Peiris seconded his suggestion.

According to media sources, the SJB and the SLPP's various factions agreed that if Alahapperuma were to win the presidency, Sajith Premadasa would be named prime minister. Anura Kumara Dissanayake was listed as the third candidate for Marxist party head.
The once-dominant Mahinda Rajapaksa's SLPP, which received 145 out of 225 votes in the 2020 parliamentary election, has now split into two groups that will back Ranil and Dullas. Due to the widespread public disapproval of the allegations of corruption against the Rajapaksa family, the party was split.

After three months of ongoing protests, the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to leave the nation the people were burdened by the debt-ridden economy with rising inflation.
People blamed Rajapaksa for his unforeseen decisions with massive tax reduction and overnight change from inorganic farming to organic for the downfall of food production and loss of jobs for majority of farmers.

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