COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s opposition leader said Thursday that if he wins the country's presidential race, he will renegotiate the International Monetary Fund economic reforms package to ensure rich residents pay more taxes and poor ones see their conditions improve.
Sajith Premadasa, the opposition leader in Parliament told The Associated Press in an interview that his party has already started discussions with the IMF to find ways to ease people's tax burden. The reforms were introduced after Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt creating the worst economic crisis in its history.
Click to Gallery
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa arrives for an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks holding a copy of his election manifesto during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa looks at his election manifesto after an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
“We will be embarking on the third path, the middle path, the path is where wealth is created, the country grows and the wealth is equitably distributed,” Premadasa said.
He said there needs to be “fundamental changes” to the current agreement between the IMF and Sri Lanka's government, done in a more “humanistic manner” to ensure that the burden on the people is lessened.
"And if there are burdens that have to be imposed, the super-rich and the rich have to disproportionately take a bigger share of the burden rather than the working men and women of Sri Lanka.”
Sri Lanka is in the middle of reforms and a debt restructuring program under an IMF agreement whereby taxes have been increased to boost state revenue. After the island nation defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022, borrowing was reduced and the printing of new currency notes was stopped by law.
The opposition parties say many of the wealthy and those who have connections with authorities don't pay their taxes, and the burden is borne by the middle and lower classes through income taxes and value-added tax on goods and services.
The presidential election on Sept. 21 is seen as a referendum on the reforms initiated by President Ranil Wickremesinghe. They have improved key economic figures, but their effects have yet to reach many ordinary people.
Premadasa criticized Wickremesinghe's economic policies, saying that he is trying to find solutions through contraction. Premadasa said his policy is to “grow out of the problem" through an export-oriented, knowledge-based economy.
Premadasa, 57, is the son of a former president late Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was assassinated by an ethnic Tamil separatist suicide bomber in 1993.
He also ran in the 2019 presidential election and lost to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to flee after two years amid angry protests against the country's economic meltdown.
Unsustainable debt, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s spending of scarce foreign reserves to prop up the country’s currency, the rupee, led to a severe shortage of essentials such as fuel, medicine, cooking gas and food in 2022. It sparked riots, forcing Rajapaksa to flee the country and later resign. Sri Lanka's parliament elected Wickremesinghe as president to cover Rajapaksa’s remaining time.
Wickremesinghe is also running in the election and is seeking approval for his economic agenda, promising rapid growth with an ambitious target of making Sri Lanka a developed nation by the centenary of its independence in 2048.
Inflation dropped to 0.5% in August from 70% two years ago under Wickremesinghe's administration. Interest rates have also come down, the rupee has rebounded, and foreign currency reserves have increased. Creditor countries such as India, Japan and France have agreed to defer debt repayments until 2028, giving the island nation space to rebuild its economy.
But professionals complain of high taxes, and all have been affected by high living costs.
Premadasa is one of the three leading candidates, from a total of 38, and is supported by many ethnic and religious minority groups.
Premadasa said he would prosecute those in the Rajapaksa administration who ordered cremating the dead bodies of Muslim COVID-19 victims — part of a government mandate at the height of the pandemic to avoid contamination, but one that ignored religious sentiments — and pay compensation to their families. Premadasa called it a “racist policy.”
He also said that he would allow maximum devolution of power to the ethnic Tamil majority in the northern and eastern provinces, a long-standing demand from the community. He also promised to call an international donor conference to help rebuild areas affected by a 26-year separatist civil war in those provinces.
The war killed at least 100,000 people.
Premadasa also said he would bring closure to the issue of forcible disappearances and those who went missing in action.
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa arrives for an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks holding a copy of his election manifesto during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa looks at his election manifesto after an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Opposition leader and the presidential candidate of United People's Power Sajith Premadasa speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
KARTALKAYA, Turkey (AP) — As flames tore through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey, friends Esra Karakisa and Halime Cetin stood helpless, paralyzed by the horror unfolding before them: people leaning out of smoke-filled rooms pleading for help and others making the harrowing decision to leap out.
The fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalya, in the Koroglu mountains in Bolu province, on Tuesday left at least 76 people dead and 51 injured. It came near the start of a two-week winter break for schools when hotels in the region are filled to capacity.
“There was no one around. They were calling for firefighters. They were breaking the windows. Some could no longer stand the smoke and flames, and they jumped,” Cetin, an employee at a hotel adjacent to the Grand Kartal, told The Associated Press.
Her colleague, Karakisa said: “It was awful. We were terrified. People were screaming. The cries of children especially affected us. We wanted to help but there was nothing we could do. I couldn’t look it was so terrifying.”
Authorities have assigned six prosecutors to investigate the cause of the fire, which appeared to have started at the restaurant section on the fourth floor of of the wooden-clad hotel and spread quickly through to the upper floors.
At least nine people have been detained for questioning, including the hotel owner.
Flags at government buildings and Turkish diplomatic missions abroad were lowered to half-staff as the nation shocked by the disaster observed a day of mourning for the victims.
Only 45 of the 76 bodies have been identified so far, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said late Tuesday.
One of the injured was in serious condition, while 29 others were treated and released, the Health Ministry said.
The hotel had 238 registered guests, according to Yerlikaya. The fire was reported at 3:27 a.m. and the fire department began to respond at 4:15 a.m., he told reporters.
Officials and witnesses said the rescue efforts were hampered by the fact that part of the 161-room hotel is on the side of a cliff.
According to Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the hotel underwent inspections in 2021 and 2024, and “no negative situation regarding fire competence” was reported by the fire department.
Karakisa said she eventually brought clothes and water for the survivors while others rushed to bring mattresses for people to jump onto or propped up ladders against the wall to help them escape.
Among those who placed mattresses was Baris Salgur, a cleaner in a nearby hotel.
“They were saying, ‘Please help, we’re burning!' They were saying, ‘Call the fire department,' we were trying to calm them down, but there was nothing we could do, we couldn’t get in either,” Salgur, 19, said. " It was very high, we couldn’t extend a rope or anything of course. We were trying to do the best we could.”
“People jumped from a great height, I couldn’t look. There were two women at the top floor. The flames had literally entered the room. They couldn’t stand it and jumped,” he said.
Salgur described seeing a man on the top floors holding a baby and shouting for a mattress he could throw his baby on.
"We told him to be a little calmer. He waited, then the fire department came and took them (out), but unfortunately the baby had died from smoke inhalation,” he said.
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.
Tightened bed sheets hang from a window of a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A Turkish flag flag flies at half staff outside a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters and emergency teams work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at a ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, in northwest Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Enes Ozkan/IHA via AP)