Sri Lanka's opposition leader says the rich will pay more if he wins the presidential election

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.

“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)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have blocked for a second time this year legislation to establish a nationwide right to in vitro fertilization, arguing that the vote is an election-year stunt after Democrats forced a vote on the issue.

The Senate vote was Democrats’ latest attempt to force Republicans into a defensive stance on women’s health issues and highlight policy differences between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the presidential race, especially as Trump has called himself a “ leader on IVF.”

The 51-44 vote was short of the 60 votes needed to move forward on the bill, with only two Republicans voting in favor. Democrats say Republicans who insist they support IVF are being hypocritical because they won't support legislation guaranteeing a right to it.

“They say they support IVF — here you go, vote on this,” said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the bill's lead sponsor and a military veteran who has used the fertility treatment to have her two children.

The Democratic push started earlier this year after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state suspended IVF treatments until the GOP-led legislature rushed to enact a law to provide legal protections for the clinics.

Democrats quickly capitalized, holding a vote in June on Duckworth's bill and warning that the U.S. Supreme Court could go after the procedure next after it overturned the right to an abortion in 2022.

The bill would establish a nationwide right for patients to access IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies and a right for doctors and insurance companies to provide it, an effort to pre-empt state efforts to limit the services. It would also require more health insurers to cover it and expand coverage for military service members and veterans.

In a statement after the vote, Harris said Republicans in Congress “have once again made clear that they will not protect access to the fertility treatments many couples need to fulfill their dream of having a child.”

Republicans argued that the federal government shouldn’t tell states what to do and that the bill was an unserious effort. Only Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted with Democrats to move forward on the bill both times.

Meanwhile, Republicans have scrambled to counter Democrats on the issue, with many making clear that they support IVF treatments. Trump last month announced plans, without additional details, to require health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the fertility treatment.

In his debate with Harris earlier this month, Trump said he was a “leader” on the issue and talked about the “very negative” decision by the Alabama court that was later reversed by the legislature.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said that Democrats are trying to create a political issue “where there isn't one.”

“Let me remind everybody that Republicans support IVF, full stop,” Thune said just before the vote.

The issue has threatened to become a vulnerability for Republicans as some state laws passed by their party grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process. Ahead of its convention this summer, the Republican Party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all American citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF but does not explain how the party plans to do so.

Republicans have tried to push alternatives on the issue, including legislation that would discourage states from enacting explicit bans on the treatment, but those bills have been blocked by Democrats who say they are not enough.

Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, said in a floor speech then that his daughter was currently receiving IVF treatment and proposed to expand the flexibility of health savings accounts. Republican Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas have tried to pass a bill that would threaten to withhold Medicaid funding for states where IVF is banned.

Cruz, who is running for reelection in Texas, said Democrats were holding the vote to “stoke baseless fears about IVF and push their broader political agenda.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, center, accompanied by Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ., left, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., center-right, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., right, speaks about the need to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF), on the Senate steps at Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, left, accompanied by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., right, speaks about the need to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF), on the Senate steps at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Front row, left to right, Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., pose for a photograph after speaking about the need to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF), on the Senate steps at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., center, accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, left, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., right, speaks about the need to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF), on the Senate steps at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

FILE - The Capitol is seen from the Russell Senate Office Building as Congress returns from a district work week, in Washington, March 24, 2014. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)