President Rajapakse’s United People’s Freedom Alliance, running in a coalition with the breakaway LTTE faction known as the TMVP (formerly ‘Karuna faction’), wins control of the Eastern Provincial Council. The election commission reported that the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance coalition won 52 per cent of the vote, giving it a total of 20 seats on the province’s 37-member council.
About 60 per cent of the province’s nearly 1 million registered voters cast votes, according to the Election Commission. Independent monitors said the TMVP threatened voters during the election, opposition parliamentarians were attacked by mobs, children who appeared to be around 13 years old cast ballots and gangs of people shuttled between polling stations to vote numerous times.
Source
Sri Lanka ‘s president says election win a mandate for war against Tamil rebels, Associated Press (reported in the International Herald Tribune), 11 May 2008; Voters in eastern Sri Lanka worry about future, Associated Press (reported in the Guardian), 10 May 2008.
Quotations
“I note that the people of the east have given a clear mandate for peace through the defeat of terrorism, the strengthening of democracy and the development of the country.” President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“I can’t say it was a free and fair election because it was not really.” Kingsley Rodrigo, head of the independent People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections.
“This is a totally distorted mandate that they got. This is obtained by fraud.” Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), which ran in with the UNP.
Related events
11 March 2008
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Related news items
The war dividend, The Economist, 15 May 2008
Bombing on eve of Sri Lanka polls, BBC, 9 May 2008;
Sri Lanka rescinds move to bar foreign media for elections, ABC News, 8 May 2008: “The Sri Lankan government said Thursday it was barring foreign journalists from covering weekend elections in the Eastern Province, but backed off hours later following a wave of protests by journalists and rights groups.”
