A son of Sri Lanka’s former President Mahinda Rajapaksa will contest the upcoming presidential election which will be held as the country grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades.

Namal Rajapaksa, 38, announced his candidacy on Wednesday for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party at a Buddhist ceremony in the capital, Colombo.

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He will challenge incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, 75, whom many analysts see as the frontrunner, in the September 21 polls.

Elected by Parliament in July 2022, Wickremesinghe has shepherded the Indian Ocean nation through its financial crisis, which triggered widespread protests against corruption and mismanagement that had forced his predecessor and Namal’s uncle, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign and flee the country.

“After careful consideration, the party decided to make Namal Rajapaksa our presidential candidate,” SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam said.

Namal, who was sports minister in his father’s presidency which ended in January 2015, said circumstances forced him into the fray as it was expected that he would only contest the 2029 presidential election.

“Now we have to sit and plan the campaign, because this is something that I didn’t expect,” Namal Rajapaksa told the AFP news agency after his candidacy was announced.

He put his name forward after the expected candidate, businessman Dhammika Perera, dropped out on Tuesday citing “personal reasons”.

Namal said he wanted to be “my own character”, but was aware that he would have to live with both the positive and negative legacies of his family’s rule.

“That is something that I will face throughout my life, not only this election,” he said.

While Mahinda is credited with ending the Tamil separatist war in 2009, there were widespread allegations that troops killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of fighting.

Test amid financial crisis

Namal’s candidacy will test whether his powerful family, which produced two presidents, has managed to retain its popularity despite the country’s economic meltdown.

Sri Lanka defaulted on $46bn foreign debt in April 2022 when it ran out of foreign exchange for essential imports. It has since signed a $10bn restructuring deal with bilateral creditors and aims to finalise a $12.5bn debt rework with bondholders, efforts Namal said he would support.

Wickremesinghe has previously contested two presidential elections and lost both. However, he has been prime minister six times since entering Parliament in 1977.

He is seeking a full five-year term to press ahead with his austerity measures, which he says are necessary to shore up the reserves of the cash-strapped nation and start repaying its external loans.

Namal’s entry turns the presidential poll into a battle among four main candidates.

Two other candidates – Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake – say they will continue with the $2.9bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout negotiated by Wickremesinghe last year, but will reduce taxes and halt privatisation.

Dissanayake, leader of a leftist party, is also pledging to jail members of the Rajapaksa family, as well as Wickremesinghe, who is accused of blocking investigations into corruption during their time in power.