{"id":40693,"date":"2015-01-08T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=40693"},"modified":"2015-01-08T08:00:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T15:00:08","slug":"sri-lanka-polling-ends-peacefully-with-high-voter-turnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/01\/08\/sri-lanka-polling-ends-peacefully-with-high-voter-turnout\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka polling ends peacefully with high voter turnout"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Sri Lanka Hot News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Sri Lankans today voted in large numbers in the bitterly contested presidential election in which incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa is seeking a record third term against his friend-turned-foe Maithripala Sirisena, with an unusually high voter turnout in Tamil and Muslim areas.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There were no major reports of violence, although private monitoring group the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) said some voters had been prevented from voting that ended at 4 pm local time.<\/p>\n<p>Election officials estimated more than 65-70 per cent voting in most places in the first seven hours of voting.<\/p>\n<p>Some 1,586,598 of the country&#8217;s 21 million population are eligible to vote. About 1,076 polling stations were set for elections.<\/p>\n<p>There are 19 candidates in the fray. But the main fight is between two-term president 69-year-old Rajapaksa and his 63-year-old former cabinet colleague Sirisena.<\/p>\n<p>We will have a resounding victory. That is very clear.\u00a0From tomorrow, we will start implementing our manifesto,&#8221; he told reporters in his constituency in Hambantota.<\/p>\n<p>Voters from minority Tamil community turned out to vote in large numbers in the areas dominated by them, defying intimidation attempts.\u00a0In the three northern districts of Tamil regions in Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu over 50% polling was recorded.\u00a0In some Muslim dominated areas, mosques&#8217; loudspeakers were used by the community members to encourage voters to cast their votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lanka Hot News Sri Lankans today voted in large numbers in the bitterly contested presidential election in which incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa is seeking a record third term against his friend-turned-foe Maithripala Sirisena, with an unusually high voter turnout in Tamil and Muslim areas. There were no major reports of violence, although private monitoring group [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}