Word: rajapaksa
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...tight electoral contest predicted between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and retired Army commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka failed to materialize when Sri Lanka went to the polls on Tuesday. Instead, Rajapaksa won easily - with 57.9% of the vote, by official count, 1.8 million more votes than Fonseka, who received around 40%. But Fonseka immediately rejected the result, alleging vote-rigging, prompting a tense standoff...
...Fonseka, once a key ally in Rajapaksa's military victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, told reporters that he refused to accept the results. He wrote to the elections commissioner, Dayananda Dissanyake, requesting him not to release the final tally until legal proceedings initiated to challenge the results were concluded. That request was ignored, and officials announced the results Wednesday afternoon. (See the top 10 magazine covers...
...government denied that it was harassing Fonseka, his family or his aides, and claimed the election result as a vote of confidence in Rajapaksa. "It is a clear victory for the people; the people have made it clear who they prefer," Susil Premjayanth, a minister and the general secretary of the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance told TIME...
...Despite the overwhelming victory reflected in the official tally, Rajapaksa did not fare well in the north and the east, home to most of the island's Tamil population. Their votes went to Fonseka, a sign of Rajapaksa's most serious task: winning the confidence of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. During the height of the Tamil separatist insurgency, the LTTE controlled much of that territory, and Tamils there are still anxious and fearful about how they will be treated by the man who crushed the dream of a Tamil homeland. Rajapaksa sounded a conciliatory tone after results were announced...
...other important voting bloc is Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. With Rajapaksa and Fonseka expected to split the vote of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, Tamils could become kingmakers. But election monitors have serious concerns about their access to the polls. There are about 170,000 recently resettled war refugees, and another 108,000 displaced people who are still held in camps. The Rajapaksa administration has repeatedly said they will all have a chance to vote, but only 35,000 of the displaced have been registered according to officials at People's Action for Free and Fair Elections, the country...