Sri Lankan PM takes early lead in presidential race

COLOMBO - Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse took an early lead over opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as results trickled in from the island's presidential election, official figures showed today.

With more than 400,000 votes counted by 3.20am (10.20am on Friday NZT), Rajapakse had secured 223,167, ahead of Wickremesinghe with 194,037 votes.

The poll was seen as a referendum on how to rescue the island's faltering peace process and tsunami-hit economy, but a Tamil Tiger boycott and sporadic violence marred the vote.

The first results came partly from postal votes cast by civil servants and soldiers on election duty -- many of whom were always more likely to have backed the premier -- and were not necessarily representative of the national trend.

The election commissioner is due to announce final results from the island's 13.3 million electorate later on tomorrow.

The election had set two contrasting visions in front of the Sri Lankan people and polarised opinions sharply.

Left-winger Rajapakse has vowed to take a tough line with the rebels, rejecting their demand for an ethnic homeland for the island's Tamil minority. He wants to tighten the terms of a 2002 truce that halted two decades of civil war.

Right-winger and former prime minister Wickremesinghe, who brokered the cease-fire, is seen as more conciliatory towards mainly Hindu Tamils and a better administrator.

Election officials said turnout was around 75 per cent, even though the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels imposed a near-blanket boycott in and around the seventh of the island they control in the north and east.

The boycott was expected to hurt Wickremesinghe's chances.

Several grenades exploded near rebel-held areas on Thursday, injuring four policemen and two civilians, and two suspected rebel cadres died when a bomb they were making exploded.

But officials said the poll was among the calmest in years.

"In general the election was peaceful," Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake said in an address on state television. "There were a few minor incidents in several parts of the country and we are still investigating them."

"Overall it seems to be a free and fair election," he added.

But the Peoples' Action for a Free and Fair Election, which deployed 22,000 local and foreign monitors, said the lack of voting in the north and east, and "an atmosphere of violence and intimidation" there, had seriously undermined the vote.

"It has compromised the democratic process and institutions," it said in a statement.

Sri Lanka's civil war, which killed more than 64,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, is unlikely to resume whoever wins. But the peace process is at its lowest ebb since the cease-fire, especially after suspected rebels assassinated the country's foreign minister in August.

Rajapakse has wide grassroots support among rural voters but his government is under fire for the slow pace of tsunami reconstruction despite $3 billion in international aid.

- REUTERS