South Asia News
Final phase of local elections ends in Sri Lanka
Oct 8, 2011, 11:25 GMT
Colombo - The final phase of local elections in Sri Lanka ended on Saturday with a shooting incident that left a presidential advisor dead and 12 persons, including a member of parliament, injured, officials said.
Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, the presidential advisor on trade union affairs, was killed and the others injured in a clash in Kolonnawua, 14 kilometres south-east of the capital, as polling was closing on Saturday evening.
Some 1.5 million voters were registered for the polls in 23 local councils. The turnout was around 60 per cent.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) party won more than two-thirds of the 300 local councils in elections held in the first phases in March and July.
The ruling party's popularity has been high since the defeat of the separatist Tamil rebels in May 2009, ending a 26-year war.
But the party failed to win a majority of local councils in the Tamil-dominated northern region that experienced the brunt of the ethnic conflict.
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