Lankans snub LTTE, 75 pc vote

Her main opponent is the United National Party (UNP)’s Ranil Wickremesinghe. Eleven other candidates are in the fray but two declared their support for Kumaratunga after the attack on her.

Despite the predictions, the UNP camp is putting up a brave front. “We are not jubilant but we are confident we will win by a narrow margin,” said Wickremesinghe’s campaign manager Irwin Weerackody.

As Kumaratunga was not allowed to travel to Attanagalla, her hometown 50 km outside the capitalto cast her vote, a ballot box from the polling booth there was flown by helicopter to Temple Trees, her official home, to enable her to do so. It was flown back later.

All the other candidates were consulted about this departure from procedure, and except for Wickremesinghe, who said he left the decision to the Elections Commissioner, the rest said they had no objections.

Isolated incidents of violence and electoral malpractices were reported from different parts of the island on election eve and polling day. Four people were murdered in separate skirmishes between supporters of Kumaratunga, Ranil Wickremesinghe and the police.

Attempts to storm four polling booths were also reported from one area of the capital.

But an independent monitoring group, the People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), was quoted by the SLBC as saying that “by and large”, the elections were peaceful, free and fair.

Voting was brisk from the minute booths opened in most areas except in Jaffna in northern SriLanka where it was low in the morning. A lull in the fighting that has rocked the peninsula in the last week and an incident-free day helped to boost the turnout later in the afternoon.

In contrast, there was a high turnout in other Tamil areas, including Mannar and Vavuniya on the northern mainland.

In Batticaloa in the east, a large number of voters from LTTE-controlled territory made the journey to the nearest polling booth in government-held area after being warned by the Tigers they would be fined Rs 500 if they did not go to vote.

According to reports from Batticaloa, the Tigers also said they had means of checking which way people had voted, and warned they would impose a fine of Rs 500 and a jail sentence of three months on anyone who voted for Kumaratunga.

Though the Tamil vote may go to Wickremesinghe, the gains he made in southern Sri Lanka prior to the assassination attempt seemed to have vanished today. In the UNP stronghold of Kurunegala in north-western province, there was a highturnout of women voters. Several said they had voted for Kumaratunga.