Rebecca Conway/Getty Images News

Rebecca Conway/Getty Images News

Things aren't looking better in Sri Lanka as acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe issued orders late Sunday for a fresh state of emergency. The specific legal provisions of the edict have yet to be announced, but in the past it has been used to deploy the military and dampen public protests. It comes ahead of Wednesday's vote in parliament to elect a new president, after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives (and then Singapore) to escape a widespread uprising against his government.

The candidates: As six-time prime minister, Wickremesinghe is one of the top contenders to take on the presidency, but many protesters want him gone and further unrest could ensue if he is elected. Other leading candidates are Sajith Premadasa, leader of the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party, as well as Dullas Alahapperuma, a senior ruling lawmaker who previously served as former Cabinet Minister of Information and Mass Media.

Stable leadership will need to be in place before the country can negotiate with the IMF over a bailout to shore up the island's economy. Sri Lanka ran out of money for fuel imports in May, its inflation rate topped 50% in June and it declared bankruptcy in early July. The country is also heavily indebted to China, Japan and India, and recent restructuring talks during the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Bali, Indonesia, did not appear to yield too much progress.

As mentioned previously on WSB: Sri Lanka could be the first domino to fall in a global economic crisis set to envelop many poorly-managed developing countries. Pakistan is having major problems with its debt, as well as a number of African and Latin nations, spelling trouble across the emerging markets. "With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical," World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart declared. "We're pretty much already there."