Sri Lanka awaits election result

Ruling party says it will challenge main opposition candidate, Fonseka, if he wins the presidential election on the grounds that he was not a registered voter.

COLOMBO // Sri Lanka's ruling party said yesterday it will challenge the main opposition presidential candidate, Sarath Fonseka, if he wins the presidential election, on the grounds that he was not a registered voter. The announcement came after millions of Sri Lankans had gone to the polls under tight security in what was a relatively quiet election day.

"We are seeking a court order on the suitability of this candidate because he is not eligible to be declared as a candidate," the foreign minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, told reporters. Earlier in the day, Mr Fonseka was unable to cast his vote as his name was not on the electoral register. The former general, who eight months ago led the Sri Lankan army to victory in the quarter-century war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, insisted that he had sent in his voter registration papers and said they had probably not been processed because of bureaucracy, which had also affected many other voters.

The elections commissioner, Dayananda Dissanayake, said in a statement that not being registered as a voter does not bar a candidate from contesting the election, although Mr Bogollagama dismissed this as a "mere" opinion. JC Weliamuna, a constitutional lawyer and executive director of the Colombo office of Transparency International, said if Mr Fonseka wins, he will take over. "Any party can challenge it in courts. But for the moment it's the elections commissioner who decides the validity of the winner," he said.

The election saw Mr Fonseka pitted against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president, as the main contestants in the race. Both are viewed as war heroes by the Sinhalese majority. But the election could be decided by the minority Tamils, who suffered most from the government offensive to end the civil conflict. While voting among Sinhalese majority appeared strong, turnout was sparse in some northern Tamil areas, their traditional bastions where the most intense fighting drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Yesterday, voting passed off relatively peacefully with only about 100 incidents reported to police throughout the country - far fewer than was expected - most were cases of intimidation outside polling booths. There had been fears that there would be widespread violence yesterday with more than 700 incidents in the run-up to the poll, including at least six killings, and police were given shoot-on-sight orders to deal with troublemakers.

However, two explosive devices were thrown at the home of a ruling party member, damaging the property but causing no injuries, while a number of small blasts were reported elsewhere in the northern Jaffna Peninsula with no known deaths. It was in this Tamil region that Mr Fonseka was expected to pick up many votes, but turnout was reported to be only about 15 per cent, far lower than expected. The overall turnout nationwide was around 70 per cent, officials said.

"There were all kinds of intimidation [in Jaffna], which scared off voters, including the firing of shells from an army camp," VT Sivalingam, a lawyer, said by telephone from Jaffna, about 400km north of Colombo. Mr Sivalingam, as well as a number of journalists in the area who spoke on condition of anonymity, said bombs, grenades and firecrackers had been set off to scare away voters. Mr Fonseka and opposition parties backing him have accused the government of transferring senior army and police commanders from the north and replacing them with loyalist officers in an attempt to rig the election.

On Sunday, the elections commissioner ordered the police chief to withdraw the transfer of a senior police officer from the north. Mr Rajapaksa, who called the presidential poll two years before his six-year term ends in 2011, was banking on the huge popularity he has enjoyed after the war ended. But the sudden entry of Mr Fonseka into the race, a contender also credited with winning the war, has presented a real challenge to the once unassailable president. The final results of the poll, in which more than 14 million were expected to vote, were not due until this morning.

Security had been tightened across the country amid fears of post-election violence, regardless of which candidate wins, and that seems ever more possible with the announcement that Mr Fonseka's candidacy could be challenged. Analysts said the president was likely to win by a slim margin, especially as Mr Fonseka had been banking on a much bigger turnout in the north. Earlier yesterday, a parliamentarian, R Sambanthan, the leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), complained in a letter to the elections commissioner that bombs had been detonated in different parts of Jaffna and some people were believed to have been injured.

"This has been done with the deliberate objective of preventing a free and fair poll, by creating fear and panic in the minds of the voters. Such a situation could prevent the voters in Jaffna from voting freely," he said in the letter. The TNA, a former supporter of the Tamil Tiger rebels who had fought for an independent Tamil homeland since 1972, has urged residents in the Tamil-dominated north to vote for Mr Fonseka.

Local polls monitor, the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV), in a noon press release also spoke of incidents in Jaffna and said it was "deeply concerned that the spate of violent incidents in Jaffna immediately before the commencement of polling and in the early hours of polling, indicate a systematic attempt to disrupt voting and ensure a low voter turnout in the peninsula". The CMEV said it was disappointed by the reports as yesterday's vote was the first post-war, national election in Sri Lanka and one in which people in the north had an opportunity to demonstrate their faith in and commitment to democratic processes.

This is especially regrettable given the imperatives of peace, reconciliation and national unity," it said. A slew of allegations have been hurled by both camps, with Mr Fonseka and his supporters accusing the president and his family of corruption and abuse of power, while Mr Rajapaksa has accused the general of conducting corrupt deals while in the army. [e-mail]