By DPA,
Colombo : The ruling party in Sri Lanka, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, won the first parliamentary elections held since last year’s defeat of Tamil separatist rebels and the end of the country’s 26-year civil war, election officials said Friday.
With some votes yet to be counted from Thursday’s elections, Rajapaksa’s United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had taken 117 seats, already a majority in the 225-member Parliament, the officials said.
It remained unclear, however, whether the UPFA had achieved its hoped-for two-thirds majority because of the remaining votes to be counted and a complicated nomination system for the parties.
But the UPFA had received 60.4 percent of ballots counted as of Friday evening.
The largest opposition party, the United National Party, had received nearly 30 percent.