Sri Lanka Election Result Seen as Blow to Democracy

Sri Lankan election officials defended the right of opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka to stand in yesterday’s ballot amid reports of a government challenge.

Fonseka, the former army chief, was not registered for the election because he was in “the battlefield” when voter lists were drawn up, his spokesman, Anura Kumara Dissanayake told reporters in Colombo, the capital. The South Asian nation’s Election Commission said in an emailed statement that it was not necessary for apresidential candidate to be a registered voter.

The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa will challenge the legitimacy of the retired general’s candidacy in the courts, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday, citing Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama. Votes are being counted in Sri Lanka’s first peacetime presidential election in three decades after the election passed off with few reports of violence and calls for the two frontrunners to improve living standards.

The outcome of Sri Lanka’s first presidential election since the end of a nearly three-decade-old civil war less than a year ago has left some wondering if the country’s democracy will be the next casualty of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s latest triumph.

“He will be a dictator,” said Charles, a former elections official who declined to give his surname—voicing a fear expressed by many who say the president’s conduct during the election campaign confirmed their worst fears about the direction the country’s politics has taken since Rajapaksa first came to power in 2005.

The former allies, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger Sarath Fonseka, both are considered heroes by the country’s Sinhalese majority for their leading role in defeating the Tamil Tigers in their quarter-century fight for an independent Tamil state.

But their presidential election contest has been acrimonious from the start, with the general accusing his former boss of entrenched corruption and the president branding Fonseka a dictator-in-waiting.

Initial results Wednesday showed Rajapaksa leading with 1,125,297 votes compared to 752,850 for Fonseka. But the race was still up for grabs, with millions of votes not tallied. There are some 14 million registered voters, and the overall turnout during Tuesday’s polling was around 70 percent.

The Sri Lankan presidential election of 2010 is the next scheduled … Presidential election results map. Blue denotes districts won by … announced on 27 November that thepresidential election will be held on 26 January 2010.

Colombo: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has taken early lead in almost all the province over his rival former Army Chief Sarath Fonseka in the presidential election 2010.

Rajapaksa called the election two years ahead of schedule to capitalise on his popularity among the majority Sinhalese after ending the island’s bloody ethnic conflict.
According to the Sri Lankan election website, the incumbent President has been leading in all polling divisions. With over 700,000 votes counted by 5 a.m Rajapaksa had taken a lead of over 179,000 over Fonseka who had 278,000 to the incumbent’s 458,000 votes, Xinhua news agency reported.i will highlight each division with that division’s winner in that year .

Oregon Election Results

A screenshot of the posting reveals a razor-thin 1% victory for Martha Coakley over Scott Brown with 100% of precincts reporting.  The only problem with the post, however, is that it came at least seven hours before the polls in Massachusetts actually close at 8:00 p.m. tonight, leading some confused Massachusetts residents to wonder why the post, which was removed, ever went up in the first place.

The results of the Measure 66 and 67 was pretty good in which Measure 66 received 54.2% “Yes” and 45.8% “No” in the Statewide Results while Measure 67 received 53.7% “Yes” and 46.3% “No” in the same. Hope the hard won Measure 66 and Measure 67 results benefit the people. Time will tell whether the results will prove to be productive for Oregon or not.

The measure 66 will have a negative effect on the income of those taxpayers who earn $125,000 individually in a year. 54% residents want to raise income tax on those who earn above $125,000 a year.

Measure 67 will raise state’s $10 minimum corporate income tax and almost 53% people want to activate it throughout state.
The extra fund will support projects like children education, health, public safety and many others.

Many are unhappy with the results of this election and according to them it will create differences among the classes while other claim, it will bring more stability in the state.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley attracting 49% of the vote while her Republican rival, state Senator Scott Brown, picks up 47%.

Three percent (3%) say they’ll vote for independent candidate Joe Kennedy, and two percent (2%) are undecided. The independent is no relation to the late Edward M. Kennedy, whose Senate seat the candidates are battling to fill in next Tuesday’s election.

Coakley is supported by 77% of Democrats while Brown picks up the vote from 88% of Republicans. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Brown leads 71% to 23%. To be clear, this lead is among unaffiliated voters who are likely to participate in the special election.

A week ago, the overall results showed Coakley leading by a 50% to 41% margin. The closeness of the race in heavily Democratic Massachusetts has drawn increasing national interest, and Brown made it clear in the final candidate debate last night that a vote for him is a vote to stop the national health care plan Democrats are pushing in Congress.

Democrat candidate Martha Coakley who had begun the electon campaign as the favorite has been relegated to the second best and there doesn’t seem much of a chance for her in today’s election.

Almost all the polls have gone against her, except that of John Zogby poll.

Zogby has claimed that Martha should win the election though with a slender margin. But he seems to be out of sync with the masses.

John Zogby is a political pollster and first senior fellow at The Catholic University of America’s Life Cycle Institute. He is the founder, president and CEO of Zogby International, a polling firm known for both phone polling and interactive, Internet-based polling.

Zogby founded the polling firm Zogby International in 1984. Since then, he has conducted polls and focus groups around the world, though he has gained the most publicity for his polls of United States Presidential elections.

He first gained attention in the 1992 presidential election when he released a survey showing the New York State Governor Mario Cuomo would lose in his home state to incumbent President George H. W. Bush. That poll is widely thought to have pushed Cuomo from the race. Later, he gained more national attention in the 1996 Presidential election when his final poll came within a tenth of a point of the actual result. Zogby also correctly polled the cliffhanger result of the 2000 presidential election won narrowly by George W. Bush, in contrast to most other pollsters who had expected Bush to win easily.

The 1972 national election saw MA being the only state going for George McGovern, DC not being a state. The 1980 national election had MA split the vote 41.90% Reagan to 41.75% Carter, over 15% going to the Independent.

Whether this special election is a bellwether for a national trend or just a reflection of MA voter quirkiness and bad timing for any election to reflect a trend in overall voter sentiment (low turnout might make it more of a comment on political machine effectiveness and preparedness) is not something I feel comfortable expounding on from a knowlegeable perspective.

The MA election result will be talked up as a bellwether event in the history of the 2010 midterm election. Like a canary in a coal mine, we will know a lot about where the two parties stand after the MA winner is declared by our elections desk. Is this the end of Obama’s agenda in Washington? Was socialism too much for the American people to swallow or will he press on like an ideological warrior? What if Çoakley wins?

Voting booths in Massachusetts open at 7am eastern time and close at 8pm local time, barring the usual shenanigans by partisan judges to keep certain friendly polling locations open later. We will follow all the days’ news live so join us today, January 19th for the final resolution of an interesting senate race betweenMartha Coakley and Scott Brown.

See the recent polls showing late deciders apparently breaking for Scott Brown.
You may predict the winner all the way up until polls close at 8pm Tuesday.

We will be bringing you MA exit polls data in this thread as we do in each election contest despite the mainstream media’s reluctance to share. Those other guys have a sanctimonious view of their role in filtering information to the public. Our goal is to trust our readers by interpreting data as soon as it is available.

Eventually a winner in the Massachusetts senate election will be declared and you can expect Right Pundits to declare that winner first before all of the mainstream media outlets make a fuss. They will keep you hanging for commercial break after commercial break until their advertising expectations are met. Only after their corporate requirements are discharged will they tell you who won. We, on the other hand, will cut out all the B.S. with a purified heart.

Recent polls show Scott Brown ahead of Coakley. There is no other way to spin it despite the liberal Daily Kos poll showing the race as a tossup. All the excitement is in the Brown camp. All the grass roots hooplah is there. All the press buzz. Barack Obama’s odd speech making fun of American-made pickup trucks will apparently not stem a populist uprising in the original tea party state. You can find a link to the MA polls in our upper left sidebar