Lankans cast ballots but Fonseka can't

COLOMBO: The feared violence did not take place, and only minor incidents were reported as an estimated 70% of Sri Lankan voters cast their ballot to elect their sixth executive president. The only remarkable feature of the day was a late revelation that principal opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka had no vote.
The island's Tamil-majority northern Jaffna district saw only 20% of the electorate exercising their franchise.An independent poll violence monitoring agency said a few grenade explosions took place in Jaffna, possibly aimed at deterring voters. Tamils boycotted the last presidential election in 2005 at the behest of the LTTE, resulting in the election of Rajapaksa mainly on a Sinhala votebank.
The explosions in the Jaffna peninsula were minor in nature and no one was injured. The low turnout could be as much due to the absence of the people whose names figure in the rolls, as to the general disenchantment of Tamils with both Sinhala candidates in the fray, as they are seen by Tamils as Sinhala nationalists.
Fonseka, a former army commander who fell out with President Mahinda Rajapaksa after winning the war against the LTTE together, admitted that his name did not figure in the 2008 electoral rolls as he was too busy with the military operations to ensure its inclusion. Attempts by the Rajapaksa campaign to suggest that Fonseka's candidature was illegal were scotched by commissioner of elections Dayananda Dissanayake, who cited elections laws to declare that a candidate could not be disqualified merely on the ground that his name did not figure in the rolls.
Even though there was no legal problem about Fonseka's candidature, pro-government attorneys and politicians argued the retired general may have committed a fraud by not disclosing earlier that his name did not figure in the rolls. Both sides said they expected to emerge victorious on Wednesday when results are announced and blamed each other for the violence.
Has the Sir Lankan government treated the Tamils fairly after the LTTE fall?