Polls open for Sri Lanka's presidential election

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Sri Lankans begin voting in a tightly fought presidential election where former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa's family is seeking a return to power after five years

Voters queue up to cast their ballots at a polling station during the Sri Lankan presidential election in Colombo on November 16, 2019.

Four years after political bruiser Rajapaksa lost power in 2015, his brother Gotabaya, 70, is running for the top job, promising development and security seven months after attacks killed 269 people. The Rajapaksas are adored by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority for defeating the Tigers and ending Sri Lanka's 37-year civil war in 2009 in which around 100,000 people lost their lives on the Indian Ocean island nation of 21.6 million. Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of buses carrying minority Muslim voters in northwest Sri Lanka, hours before polling in presidential elections got underway, police said.

Muslims from the coastal town of Puttalam were travelling to the neighbouring district of Mannar, where they were registered to vote, the police official said. Police reported to the independent Election Commission that the army was illegally manning roadblocks that could discourage residents from freely travelling to polling booths on Saturday.

 

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