staying in Asia in Sri Lanka government employees who were unable to cast their postal vote on the designated days last week for the presidential election were allowed to cast their vote on Wednesday the national election commission said that officials can cast their votes on Thursday as well the poll body added that those government employees who do not cast their postal votes Within These two days will not have further opportunities to ex to exercise their franchise postal voters were urged to visit the district election office or the divisional Secretariat where their workplace is located to cast their votes postal voting for over 7 lak 12,000 government employees and Armed Forces Staff was allowed on 4th 5th and 6th of September postal Department officials had said that over 80% votes were received by them during these designated days Sri Lanka votes on 21st of September to elect the ninth executive president in the first elections after the economic crisis was witnessed in 2022 DD India's Dr Ahmed muin faruki now joins us live from Columbo for more updates on the story hi uh Dr faruki so how are the Sri Lankan presidential elections different this time tell us who are the key contenders in the election good afternoon tan and very good afternoon to all of viers uh you see this uh election is very very different and it's a very pivotal election ever since that Sri Lanka had witnessed the 201 to's economic crisis which was the worst ever that it has faced ever since its independence in 1948 uh this time around there doesn't appear to be one single candidate who is you know uh gaining a very very very huge lead as of now uh uh the the votes seem to be uh you know divided among various categories of people and there seems to be good number of candidates who may get sufficient number of votes to take the uh you know the counting to the second round of counting as well Sri Lanka normally has you know the preferential kind of voting system in which the voters have to provide three preferences one two and three uh and on the basis of who gets 50% of the vote that candidate is elected as the winner however this time around that does not appear to be the case because this is the first time ever in Sri Lanka's history of the new Constitution that this kind of a scenario is emerging where there's a possibility that none of the candidates could get 50% of the vot right now incumbent president ronal vikr Singa he is seeking a re-election on the basis of his policies that could help uh in stabilizing the economy after it went through the economic crisis in 2022 uh we also have the opposition leader SJ Pradas who represents Sam Jala uh that is the opposition party the main opposition party in the parliament as and uh he is uh he's all all the time he's in his campaign mode talking about about how he would bring about a reform in the Sri Lankan economy he talks about stability and growth uh and he talks about how uh the people's uh uh hardship could have been alleviated and how a systems change will help in uh helping the people on on the third front we have the ntp leader anura kumaraya the national people's part is a leftist Alliance uh and uh anura is uh he has been having huge rallies and uh unconventionally he has been seeing a huge support from the youth and they have been hoping that he could probably be an alternative as well apart from these three uh the slpp which had won the elections in the previous time led by gav Raja now this time around the candidate is namal rajapaksha who's the son of Mahindra rajap Paka now this is the kind of political scenario however totally there are 38 candidates this time in the freight but the top three or even the four could you know divide the votes uh uh you know between themselves close contest there yes uh and very quickly uh sir if you talk of issues Sri Lankan economy has come out of the woods but still has not improved income levels so will economy be a key issue in this election T economy is one of the most important issues as of now you see when uh the inflation had hit 70% in 2022 in the later part of 2022 people had so much of hardship that they complained that the disposable income had reduced drastically uh one with the rising prices and secondly because of the uh uh High income tax levels that were imposed by uh the then interim government under now these issues had been playing quite high on people's agendas there has been anger there has been frustration and it it is coming out in the in the form that uh they are trying to find Alternatives from the regular candidates jvp which has had uh very small percentage of votes till now about 3 to 4% uh people and experts are saying that they might uh gain considerably because of this kind of anger among the people's minds uh this is one of the key issues that sh Lanka is facing it also is to be uh kept in mind that the coming government has to face uh the repayment uh strategies with regard to the external debt uh for now the IMF plan is in force and uh uh the debt restructuring deals have uh almost materialized with with a uh Clause that there will be a moratorium on the debt repayments till 2028 so the coming government has to plan out how they would uh take the repayment of the debt also because the debt is something which is a huge thing and that is the elephant in the room in Sri Lanka yeah yeah thank you Dr Ahmed Mo faruki reporting from Columbo