Lankan poll results awaited, ruling PA claims win

Final results would be announced after a meeting with political parties scheduled for 11.30 am, he said. The results had previously been expected on Wednesday.

Tuesday’s vote was a key test of Kumaratunga’s plan to end the country’s 17-year ethnic war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in which more than 61,000 people have died. Government media proclaimed that President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s ruling PA had won the elections, capturing 109 seats in the 225-member parliament.

The number is short of an absolute majority, but PA is expected to sail through with the help of a Tamil minority group — Eelam People’s Democratic Party — which PA leaders said had given an assurance of support.

The main opposition United National Party (UNP) had won 90 seats while the remainder were shared by the Leftist People’s Liberation Front and other Tamil groups, government media said.

The figures announced by the government media contrasted with latest official results released by the Elections Commissioner, which showed the PA winning 88 and the UNP 72 of the 175 seats declared. S B Dissanayake, secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the main constituent of the the PA, said Kumaratunga was expected to appoint a new government either on Thursday of Friday.

The Elections Department has yet to announce the results in some areas of the central Kandy district, which was the worst affected by the violence and tampering.

Polls chief Dissanayake said on state television late on Wednesday that the vote at 22 polling booths had been annulled following allegations of violence and vote-rigging.

UNP officials said they would wait for the final results before commenting.

"Kandy was like a war zone. We are not sure of the final decision the Elections’ Commissioner will take but we are watching the situation closely," UNP chairman Karu Jayasuriya said.

In Sri Lanka’s complex electoral system — a mix of direct voting and proportional representation — seats are allocated according to the percentage of total votes polled by a party in electoral districts.

Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon said the election was marred by abuses including intimidation of voters and stuffing of ballot boxes.

McKinnon said, however, that his observers believed the overall election process had worked well.

Local elections monitors and those from the European Union were expected to issue statements on Thursday on the conduct of the elections.