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 .