Sri Lanka's Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa on Tuesday, 19 July, announced the withdrawal of his candidature for the president's post of the crisis-ridden country, where the elections are due to be held on Wednesday.
"For the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish I hereby withdraw my candidacy for the position of President," Premadasa wrote in a tweet.
The Sri Lankan Parliament has announced that MPs Ranil Wickremesinghe (also six-time prime minister), Dullas Alahaperuma, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake will contest for the presidency on Wednesday, according to Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror.
Who is Sajith Premadasa?
Born into a prominent political family, Sajith Premadasa is the son of Ranasinghe Premadasa, who served as prime minister from 1977 to 1989, and president from 1989 to 1993, until he was assassinated in a suicide bombing, carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
In 2019, Premadasa was made the United National Party's presidential candidate but was defeated by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who won 52.25 percent of the total votes. While Rajapaksa's support base mainly comprised predominant Sinhalese populations, Premadasa was more popular among the Tamils and the Muslims in Sri Lanka.
In February 2020, Premadasa, with the approval of the UNP working committee, formed the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, to contest the 2020 parliamentary election in Sri Lanka. The election commission, in the same month, accepted the SJB as a legitimate political party.
Premadasa's withdrawal comes as a surprise given that he was one of the key contestants in the contest to replace Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, a Junior Fellow with ORF's Strategic Studies Programme who focuses on South Asia, had told The Quint, "He might do a fair job in bringing together the Opposition and the independent MPs. The problem, however, is that protesters demand the dissolution of the parliament, which means even he might not enjoy complete legitimacy."
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