Voting concludes in Sri Lanka president polls; result may come by Sunday afternoon
WION Web Team New Delhi, Delhi, India Nov 16, 2019, 07.03 PM(IST)
Sri Lankan police and election officials wait to load ballot boxes and papers into buses from a distribution center to polling stations, ahead of country's presidential election. Photograph:( AFP )
Results could come as early as midday on Sunday if there is a clear winner.
Voting in Sri Lanka's presidential election concluded on Saturday with reportedly registering over 80% voter turnout.
Some 85,000 police were on duty for the election with a record 35 candidates running for president, an office with considerable power similar to the French political system, with close to 16 million eligible voters.
Voting which began at 7 am in the morning ended at 5:00 pm.
One of the two frontrunners is grey-haired retired army lieutenant colonel Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 70, younger brother to the charismatic but controversial Mahinda Rajapaksa, president from 2005-15.
Dubbed the "Terminator" by his own family, "Gota" is promising an infrastructure blitz and better security in the wake of the Islamist attacks in April that killed 269 people.
"Gotabaya will protect our country," construction worker Wasantha Samarajjeew, 51, said as he cast his ballot in Colombo.
His main rival is Sajith Premadasa, 52, from the governing liberal United National Party (UNP), son of assassinated ex-president Ranasinghe Premadasa.
He is also pushing development and security as well as free sanitary pads for poor women, earning him the nickname "Padman" after a famous Bollywood movie.
The Rajapaksas are adored by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority for defeating Tamil Tiger separatists and ending a 37-year civil war in 2009.
They are detested and feared by many Tamils, who make up 15 per cent of the population. The conflict ended with some 40,000 Tamil civilians allegedly killed by the army.
During Mahinda Rajapaksa's presidency, Gotabaya was defence secretary and effectively ran the security forces, even allegedly overseeing "death squads" that bumped off political rivals, journalists and others.
He denies the allegations.
What also concerns Western countries, as well as India, is that strategically located Sri Lanka moved closer to China under Mahinda Rajapaksa, even allowing two Chinese submarines to dock in Colombo in 2014.
Under its Belt and Road Initiative spanning Asia and beyond, China loaned and granted Sri Lanka billions of dollars for infrastructure projects, many of which turned into white elephants and mired in corruption allegations.
Mahinda says credit was unavailable elsewhere.
Western capitals "should give a fair chance to us", Basil Rajapaksa, another brother, told reporters. "They can't be monitors of this country. They must be partners."
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