Sri Lanka Presidential Election Concludes…… First Result by Midnight

Sri Lanka went for the presidential elections today (January 26) to elect its sixth executive president. Polling commenced at 7.00am this morning little over 12,400 polling centers. A total of 14,088,500 voters had qualified to exercise their franchise all over the island.

Sri Lanka constitutionally goes for presidential elections every six years and previous election was held on November 17, 2005 where present Mahinda Rajapaksha was elected with a percentage of 50.29. President Rajapaksha had decided to go for the presidential elections sparing two more years him to be in office.

In the previous presidential elections, Mahinda Rajapaksha who represented the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) was voted with 4,887,152 out of 9,717,039 valid votes. His rival contestant Ranil Wickremesinghe who represented the United National Party (UNP) was voted with 4,706,336 votes.

Presidential Election 2010 was concluded at 4.00pm with no major incidents on the Election Day. The figures shown by the local election monitoring bodies had indicated an increase of election related violence incidents during the pre-election period.

People’s Action for Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL) said that by noon over 50 percent had cast their votes. He also said that no major incidents were reported except few threatening incidents in several districts.

President Mahinda Rajapaksha cast his vote at Madamulana in Hambantota district with all his family members. The common opposition’s candidate Major General (retired) Sarath Fonseka was not seen casting his vote. When the rumors began to spread in the town, he had to appear on TV and told the country that he had no vote and had not registered for the vote for the year 2008 list.

Anyway, the Commissioner of Elections Dayananda Dissanayake making a statement said that it was not a requirement to be listed in the registry to be a candidate for a presidential election.

The Secretariat of Elections announced that the counting will begin at 8.00pm at total number of 888 counting centers island wide. Postal voting is counted at 139 centres while 12 centres have been allocated for the counting of votes of displaced voters.

A senior official from the Secretariat of Elections also said that they hope to release the first result by midnight.

-Asian Tribune -