General elections began in Sri Lanka Thursday, two months after President Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected with a sweeping margin against his rival and former army chief Sarath Fonseka.
More than 14.08 crore people will choose 225 legislators among 7,620 contestants, election officials said. There are 11,000 polling stations across the country.
People are participating in this election with less enthusiasm compared to the Jan 26 presidential poll, which recorded a voter turnout of close to 75 percent, Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake said.
“Not much of interest shown by voters. We did not get the same level of queues to vote as in the presidential election,” an official manning a polling station in an eastern Colombo suburb was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
Officials said Rajapaksa and his family voted early at Medamulana area in the southern district of Hambantota where his eldest son Namal is contesting.
This is the first general election held without the presence of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was defeated by the government troops in May last year.
President Rajapaksa’s ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is seeking mandate for his reconstruction plan in the country’s north after the end of his military campaigns against LTTE.
“I have the plans to make this country the wonder of Asia,” Rajapaksa told the final election rally Monday.
Former army commander General Sarath Fonseka, the common opposition rival against Rajapaksa, who is currently in jail, is contesting from Colombo and is expected to win the seat for his coalition Democratic National Alliance.
Out of the 36 political parties in the race, the main contenders are the ruling UPFA, the main opposition United National Party and the newly formed Democratic National Alliance headed by the leftist JVP or the People’s Liberation Front.
Chief of the Police Elections Bureau Gamini Navarathna said earlier that nearly 80,000 police and Army personnel would be deployed for the security on the day prior to the election, Election Day and the following day.
Navarathna said special police mobile units are also operating around the country in the election period.
Rajapaksa dissolved the island’s parliament in February shortly after his landslide victory at the presidential election when he defeated Fonseka by about 1.8 million votes.
The new 225-member legislature is scheduled to hold its first session April 22.
