COLOMBO: Sri Lankans voted under tight security in their first post-war presidential poll Tuesday, which opened with a series of pre-dawn bomb attacks after a tense and bitter campaign. The blasts in the northern Tamil heartland of Jaffna were a violent start to the contest between President Mahinda Rajapakse and his former army chief Sarath Fonseka that threatens new instability in the island nation. Two explosive devices were thrown at the home of an organiser for Rajapakse's Sri Lanka Freedom Party, causing damage to the property but no injuries, the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence said. Both sides said they expected to emerge victorious on Wednesday when results are announced and blamed each other for the violence, which the CMEV said had scared some voters and led to low turnout in the north. "We will have a great victory," Rajapakse told reporters after casting his ballot in his southern home constituency of Mulkirigala. "We must be ready to face the challenges of reaching new heights after this vote," added the one-time film actor who entered parliament aged just 24. There are no reliable opinion polls in the country and political observers say the election is too close to call between the men, who are the only realistic contenders in a field of 22. CMEV national coordinator DM Dissanayake said there had been 64 violent incidents in total on polling day, out of which 30 were serious, such as gunfire or explosions near voting booths. "It is too early to give a final assessment, but we would not be able to say the elections were free and fair in some areas," he told AFP, referring to Tamil areas in the north and east. In the Tamil-dominated town of Vavuniya, where CMEV said grenades were let off near a polling station, streams of people caught up in the war made their way to makeshift voting booths in schools. Fonseka supporter Kandaswamy Wellarayanam, 73, walked six kilometres (four miles) from one of the nearby state internment camps where thousands of displaced Tamils were locked up after the end of fighting in May. Now able to move freely after repeated condemnation of the camps by the United Nations, he said he and his family were eager to take part, even though buses that were meant to transport them never turned up. The technicolour alliance behind Fonseka of Marxists, Muslims, Tamils and right-wingers has threatened to stage street protests if it feels the result has been stolen. Rajapakse's supporters are drawn by the 64-year-old's charisma and populist approach and see him as the man who liberated the country from a fight with the Tigers that cost 80,000-100,000 lives, according to the UN.

Fonseka 'unable to vote'

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's main opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka said he could not vote in Tuesday's presidential election because of an administrative problem. The former army chief's name was not on the 2008 voter register, which was being used by the elections commission for Tuesday's presidential election, in which he was challenging incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse. "My name is not on the 2008 register and therefore I cannot vote at this election," Fonseka told AFP. "The government is trying to use this to mislead the public at the last minute." He said Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake had accepted his nomination papers and there was no legal obstacle for him to take up the presidency if he won Tuesday's vote, contrary to reports in state-run media. Another candidate, Vickremabahu Karu-naratne, was turned away at the polling booth because he did not have an identity card, but was later allowed to vote with special permission from the authorities, an election official said.