No Woman Among 39 Candidates for Sri Lanka Presidential Polls

A total of 39 candidates have filed nominations for next month’s presidential election in Sri Lanka, announced the island nation’s election commission announced here on Thursday.

Ironically, there are no women among these candidates.  , The candidates including three minority Tamils and two Buddhist monks.

The presidential election is to be held in Sri Lanka on September 21.

In the last presidential election in 2019, there were 35 candidates.

R M A L Rathnayake, the election commission chief, said there were three objections against three candidates, which were rejected by the commission.

More than 17 million eligible voters in the 22 electoral districts in Sri Lanka will vote for the president of the island nation.

Besides incumbent President Wickremesinghe, the other prominent candidates in fray are Namal Rajapaksa, the 38-year-old heir to the Rajapaksa dynasty, the main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the Marxist JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.