Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent President of Sri Lanka, was declared the winner of a presidential election today even as his main challenger, surrounded by troops in a luxury hotel, contested the results and accused the Government of trying to have him assassinated.
Mr Rajapaksa, who took power in 2005 and presided over the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels in May, won 57.8 per cent of 10.4 million votes in the first peacetime presidential poll in almost three decades, according to the final results.
General Fonseka, the former army chief who led the campaign against the Tigers before falling out with the President and joining the opposition, won 40.2 per cent of the vote on the Indian Ocean island.
"I announce that Mahinda Rajapaksa has won this presidential election," Dayananda Dissanayake, the independent Elections Commissioner, told reporters as the President’s supporters cheered and let off firecrackers in the streets.
The emphatic result dashed opposition hopes that General Fonseka could split the vote of the ethnic Sinhalese majority and win enough support from minority Tamils and Muslims to unseat Mr Rajapaksa.
It came amid high melodrama in Colombo, the seaside capital, with heavily armed soldiers surrounding the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, where the General and his team are staying, since the early hours of the morning.
Even as the results were being announced, General Fonseka told reporters in the hotel that he rejected them and had sent a letter to Mr Dissanayake asking him to nullify the election because of vote-rigging and abuse of government resources.
"They have distorted the election result," he said, adding that he would launch a legal challenge through the courts.
"Victory has been grabbed away from us by the Government," he said. "There is no democracy here."
In the letter, he accused Mr Rajapaksa of using the state media to attack him, misappropriating public funds for his campaign and preventing Tamils displaced by the war from voting.
Mr Dissanayake appeared to agree with many of those complaints, but is unlikely to review the result as he has publicly announced that he intended to retire the day after the elections.
Just before announcing the results, he pleaded again to be allowed to resign, saying thst state media violated his guidelines and other government institutions behaved in a way that embarrassed him.
"I request to be released," he said. "I cannot bear this anymore."
General Fonseka also accused the Government of putting his life in danger by asking him to give up the security detail of 70 soldiers who have been guarding him from attack by the remaining Tamil rebels.
"I can't stay in this hotel indefinitely because it's very expensive," he said. "This is an exercise which is aimed at assassinating me."
General Fonseka denied making specific plans to leave the country, but said that he might have to seek temporary shelter overseas if the Government did insist on taking back his security detail, which also includes ten vehicles.
The general has residency rights in the United States, having won a Green Card through a lottery system, and has two daughters studying in Oklahoma.
He declined to say where he would seek shelter if necessary.
Earlier, one of his key supporters sparked talk that the general might head to India when he said he was meeting a foreign diplomat "from a neighbouring country" to negotiate safe passage. The Indian Foreign Ministry told The Times it could neither confirm nor deny that.
The Sri Lankan Government denied trying to arrest or intimidate the general, but accused him of gathering 400 supporters in the hotel, including armed military deserters, to make plans for a possible coup.
"They have booked 100 rooms," Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, an army spokesman, said. "They are highly trained military people. We are suspicious about their gathering."
The general denied having any deserters with him and handed over several people he said were retired soldiers working in his security detail.
There were no signs of protests to support him and the general said that he had refrained from calling his supporters on to the streets because they were "tired" and "confused" by the election.
Analysts said that there were no precedents for Sri Lankans disputing election results through mass unrest and the opposition alliance was too diverse to have the necessary organisational structure.
Soon after the results, President Rajapaksa said that he wanted a new mandate to bless his plans to develop Sri Lanka by exploiting its geographically strategic position astride air and sea lanes, rebuilding infrastructure and encouraging foreign investment.
"After this election, everyone should now join together in building the country," he said. "From today onward, I am the president of everyone, whether they voted for me or not."
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