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TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka : Sri Lanka's ruling coalition was on Sunday declared the winner of key elections in the east of the island, and hailed its victory as a major boost for the war against Tamil rebels.
Election officials confirmed the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance party (UPFA) and its allies had won control over a new 35-member provincial council in the eastern coastal region.
Opposition parties and monitoring rights groups, however, complained of widespread irregularities, including harassment by Tamil Tiger defectors now allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse.
The region, once home to several Tamil Tiger enclaves, was brought under government control after heavy fighting last year and Colombo is determined to show normality has returned.
The polls were overshadowed by the rebel sinking of a navy cargo ship in Trincomalee port hours before voting started on Saturday, as well as a bomb attack in the town of Ampara late Friday that killed 12 civilians.
But the government said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are fighting for a separate state in the north and east, had suffered a major blow by failing to derail the elections.
"The government victory at the eastern polls has shattered the wild dreams of the West-backed Eelamists," or Tamil separatists, said Sri Lanka's environment minister, Patali Champika Ranawaka.
"The verdict of the people is that they are happy with the government's ongoing strategy to defeat separatism," added Susil Premajayantha, a senior government official and education minister.
The result, he said, gave the government a new mandate to step up the war against the LTTE, who are now hemmed into a swathe of jungle in the north.
The president wants to partially devolve power in the east from his ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government to ethnic Tamil allies in the Tamil People's Liberation Tigers (TMVP), a grouping of LTTE defectors.
The government, which pulled out of a truce with the rebels in January, says this will prove it is serious about addressing Tamil grievances and undermine the LTTE's contention that Colombo is racist.
The polls were the first to be held in the tsunami-hit and ethnically-mixed eastern districts of Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Ampara in 20 years.
With nearly all votes counted, election officials said Rajapakse's ruling UPFA and its TMVP allies had won 20 out of 35 council seats up for grabs.
But the opposition UPA party, allied with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), complained of widespread irregularities.
"We don't accept the results. In Batticaloa and Ampara, the government with the TMVP rigged the votes, especially in Tamil-dominated areas. We are collecting the evidence," fumed SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem.
Hakeem had been campaigning for a restoration of a Norwegian-brokered truce and resumption of what he says should be "bold" peace talks that address the grievances of both minority Tamils and Muslims.
Rights groups also accused the TMVP of harrassing voters, stuffing ballot boxes and even using child soldiers to cast votes.
"Police said they are helpless because these people are backed by powerful politicians," said Sunanda Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement (FMM), a Sri Lankan rights group.
The pro-LTTE tamilnet.com also dismissed the elections as "rigged".
Analyst Rohan Edirisinghe said that if the results stand, the government can be expected to press on with its military operations aimed at capturing the north.
"If the victory was a legitimate, then the government has got a mandate to continue its military strategy," said Edirisinghe, the director of the Centre for Policy Studies.
Although he said "there are serious doubts about the credibility of the polls," he added that the country's election commissioner was seen as unlikely to challenge the result.
Tamil rebels began attacks in the early 1970's and all-out war broke out in the 1980's. The conflict has claimed around 70,000 lives.
- AFP
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