Ex-Tamil Tigers win polls in Sri Lanka's tense east

A pro-government militia of Tamil Tiger defectors has swept to victory in the first local elections in Sri Lanka's restive east in 14 years, official results showed Tuesday.

The armed Tamil People's Liberation Party (TMVP), which broke away from the main separatist movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, won 72 of the 101 council seats in Monday's vote in the district of Batticaloa.

The government-backed TMVP had been widely expected to win the vote as it had been calling the shots in the troubled region since security forces drove out the main Tamil Tiger rebels eight months ago.

Colombo plans to use Monday's polls here as a curtain-raiser for a larger provincial council election later in the year to allow Tamils, who are in the minority nationally but a majority in Batticaloa, to have greater autonomy.

"This peaceful election underlines the aim of the government to create an environment in which all our people could live in freedom and harmony," Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse said in a statement.

The United Nations has accused police and security forces in Sri Lanka of colluding with the TMVP, led by V. Muralitharan, to recruit child soldiers to fight the Tigers.

Muralitharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, defected in March 2004.

The government has angrily denied such charges and accused UN diplomats of being "terrorists," but local and international rights groups have documented alleged excesses of the TMVP with the tacit support of the security forces.

The TMVP took complete control of eight out of nine councils, with a ninth going to its proxies under the president's People's Alliance.

The results showed about 51 percent of the 290,000 electorate turned out to cast their ballots.

Poll monitors said some people had been forced to vote, but there were no major incidents of violence.

The government poured an additional 6,500 police and security forces into the region to secure the election. In some areas, they were deployed to drive away wild elephants blocking polling booths.

Although the vote was conducted in relative calm, fighting raged elsewhere in the island's embattled north where the military reported killing 10 rebels for the loss of three government soldiers on Monday.

After taking the east of the island from the Tigers in July, the military has turned its attention to the Tigers' mini state in the north, and appears confident of victory.

In the east, the election campaign was marred by allegations that the TMVP was imposing gun law amid reports of murder and intimidation, which the group has denied.

The TMVP founder, Karuna, is now in a British jail after being convicted of entering London with a fake "official" passport.

He says Sri Lanka's government arranged his clandestine passage to Britain to escape him being targeted by Tamil Tiger rebels, but Colombo has denied any involvement.

Source: AFP