File photo used for representational purposes.
Colombo: Sri Lanka's long-delayed local council polls will be held in May, the election commission announced Thursday, setting up the first popularity test of the island nation's new leftist government.
The vote was due in 2022 but was postponed by the last administration, which argued that an unprecedented economic crisis that year had left it unable to afford the contest.
Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ruled in August that then-president Ranil Wickremesinghe had acted unlawfully by delaying the polls indefinitely and ordered them held at the earliest opportunity.
Elections for all but three of Sri Lanka's 339 local government bodies will be held on May 6, the commission announced, with the remainder to be scheduled later.
Sri Lanka faced its worst-ever economic crisis in 2022 when it declared its first sovereign default on $46 billion in external debt.
Months of consumer goods shortages sparked widespread civil unrest culminating in the ousting of then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
His successor Wickremesinghe secured a $2.9 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March 2023 after doubling income taxes, removing energy subsidies and increasing prices.
Wickremesinghe lost last year's presidential polls, which saw the landslide victory of leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake thanks to simmering discontent over the crisis and its aftermath.
Dissanayake has continued with the austerity measures introduced by Wickremesinghe, while the IMF has said the country's economy is stabilising and emerging from its worst meltdown.
