Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa won re-election yesterday in an historic post-war vote, but his chief rival called for the results to be annulled after soldiers surrounded him in a luxury hotel.
Official results showed Rajapaksa winning 57.8 percent of 10.4 million votes cast against 40.2 percent for former army commander General Sarath Fonseka, Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake said.
Fonseka and Rajapaksa as allies in war laid claim to the total defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam but became rivals in a close-fought, bloody campaign that culminated in a relatively peaceful election on Tuesday with heavy turnout.
“I announce that Mahinda Rajapaksa has won this presidential election,” commissioner Dissanayake told reporters, adding there was “no question” Rajapaksa had won more than the required 50 percent plus one vote to secure another six-year term.
Soon after, Fonseka said he had asked Dissanayake to nullify the vote, alleging vote-rigging.
“We ask him to declare null and void the results. We have asked him not to release the results as we are going to go to the courts,” the challenger told reporters. “Our strength is people and their franchise has been disregarded.”
Dissanayake said there were three areas in which vote counters had been assaulted by political operatives but declined to say which camp was responsible.
Hours before Rajapaksa was declared the winner, two people were killed and four wounded in a grenade attack on a Buddhist temple in the central town of Gampola, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. It was not immediately clear if the blast was poll-related, he said.
Tension was high yesterday as troops surrounded Fonseka in the Cinnamon Lakeside hotel in Colombo.
“These people have surrounded the hotel with military and threatened my security people,” Fonseka said by telephone.
Nanayakkara said there were no plans to arrest Fonseka but rather to capture around 400 army deserters with him who could pose a potential coup risk.
“They have booked 100 rooms. They are highly trained military people. We are suspicious about their gathering. General Fonseka has released nine deserters to the military police,” he said.
Fonseka later said the men were part of his security detail: “If Udaya Nanayakkara says there are 400 people in this hotel, he must be off his nuts. They want to remove all my security.”
Fonseka quit the army last November and entered the race with the backing of a motley coalition of political parties. He delivered an election day shock when he admitted that he had not registered to vote, prompting the government to cry foul over an electoral commission ruling that he was still qualified to stand for election.
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